


Fresh

by WhatWouldLilyDo



Series: Frogs [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Bipolar Nursey, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Drinking, Coming Out, Deaf Character, Deaf Farmer, Drink and Drug use, F/M, Gray-ace Nursey, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trans Chowder, Trans Chris "Chowder" Chow, Trans Male Character, Underage Drinking, bitty's sophomore year, chowder's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2018-09-17 18:19:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 91,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9337325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatWouldLilyDo/pseuds/WhatWouldLilyDo
Summary: Chris Chow is ready to leave San Francisco and get a fresh start. He hopes that Samwell University is the place where he can do that.Bitty's sophomore year, from Chowder's point of view.





	1. Samwell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing OMGCP so I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter include coming out, fear of discrimination, and money issues. (More details in endnotes)

His arms tightened around his chest as university buildings came into sight. For the whole flight between San Francisco and Boston, Chris had been buzzing with excitement. This had faded into light anticipation as they got into the uber, and now that Samwell was in sight, his mind was plagued with doubt and fear. His mother's voice was white noise as she pointed out landmarks and reminisced on her own time in school, and his father's occasional monotone comments did nothing to drag Chris into listening. All he could focus on was the possibility that last night's nightmare would be realized and Chris would leave Massachusetts heartbroken.

"Do you recognize it? Chrissy?"

Chris sat up with a jolt and blinked at his mom until her words registered. His eyes slid towards the window and settled on the ice rink their car had stopped by. He shook his head, but even not recognising the place, he knew what it was. This was Faber, and the last time he was here he had been four years old. All the tension left his body as he got out the car and looked up at the building where he had first learned to skate; the building which he hoped he would call his rink for the next four years.

"Are— Are you here for the tour?" a redhead, who was hovering just outside the main entrance, stammered nervously.

"Yeah!" Chris grinned at him. "I'm Chris Chow. Goalie. You're on the team?"

If it hadn't happened before his eyes that very moment, Chris wouldn't have believed that the boy could flush deeper. His skin turned from bright pink to the same tone as the Samwell banners hanging up around the rink. "Uh… No, I— I'm here for the tour too. William Poindexter. Uh, Will. D-man."

Chris's eyes widened in excitement. The nervousness was clearly nothing to do with leading a tour, and the question wasn't so that he could point Chris in the right direction for it, as he had originally assumed. Will didn't have any parents behind him like Chris did, and probably didn't want to risk being the first to show up when he was on his own, but to Chris, he was an instant opportunity. "Well, Will, I think we're going to be great friends!" Chris hoped that his smile would reassure the other boy. "We'll be defending these goals together soon enough, right?" Saying the words to somebody who didn't know him made them more believable.

"I— Maybe? I don't know if Samwell is really for me. I mean—" Will glanced over at him and Chris quickly rearranged his expression to try and hide the disappointment he'd felt over the hesitation. Whatever Will saw, though, was enough for him not to finish his thought.

Chris started to wrap his arms around his body again, before remembering his sister's words as she'd dropped them off at the airport.

"Remember you don't have to be so defensive anymore, Chris," she had said, and it was the way she pronounced his name, without turning it into Chrissy that had made him nod even if he was not sure what she was talking about. Shelley would elaborate anyway, he knew. "It's colder up in Massachusetts, so at least it won't look so strange you keeping that hoodie of yours on, but there's nothing to hide, okay? You're going to be great. I'm so proud of you. Just don't wrap yourself up that way you do. Open body language. Keep your arms down and be friendly. They're going to love you." She had finished the speech with a kiss to his forehead and Chris was pretty sure there were tears in her eyes when she stepped back.

Now, he let his hands hang loosely by his side, even though they felt strange and useless. "Mom, Dad, I think I'm okay now. You two should go and see if that cafe is still around. I'll ring you when I'm done." He shot them a smile as he took a step towards Faber's doors, and was glad to see his parents retreat without a protest.

* * *

The girl who greeted the 'tadpoles’, as everyone seemed to be referring to them as, was about two inches shorter than Chris's mom and spoke with even more authority. He didn't even blink when she introduced herself as the team manager, but next to him Will shifted in surprise, and Chris sank his teeth into his lower lip to stop the sigh of frustration that threatened to emerge. Surprise didn't mean discomfort and he refused to let himself look at Will to check how he actually felt about an Asian female manager.

He forced himself to take a couple of deep breaths as they started the tour of the rink. Chris found himself falling in step with another guy, who introduced himself as Nursey - "It's a hockey nickname, you know? That's what the guys at Andover all called me. Even though it's basically just my family name, but whatever, it's chill." - and the two of them shared stories of playing hockey at private schools from opposite ends of the country. Chris was vaguely aware that, rather than getting to know someone new, Will was trailing right behind Nursey and him, listening but not contributing to their conversation.

By the time they were looking at the ice, Chris had talked to all the potential Wellies and was feeling simultaneously more excited for the prospect of coming to Samwell and more nervous that he might not make the team. His fingers tapped rapidly against the edge of the boards as an outward display of his nervous energy, and he barely even noticed what their tour guide was now telling them.

"Dex, man, what's your problem?" Nursey’s question made Chris jump. It might not have been long since they had met but hearing the New York accent take on a sharp tone sounded wrong on Nursey, somehow, and he couldn't help but look in curiosity to see what had caused it. Will's face was once again Samwell red as he faced off against Nursey, and Chris remembered with a jolt that they had both introduced themselves as defensemen. There were enough people there that most people had someone else who played the same position as them, but it was only now occurring to Chris, so wrapped up in all the other reasons he might not make the team, that they were competing for places. Perhaps that explained Nursey and Will - Dex? - taking a disliking to each other. Not wanting them to think he was eavesdropping, Chris turned to look back at the ice, but still caught Dex's retort.

"You just don't seem like the sort of person who needs help from a scholarship."

"I can still apply for it," came Nursey’s petulant response, but the footsteps by Chris's side told him that Dex hadn't stuck around to carry on the argument. Chris immediately started to talk in an attempt to steer them away from the conversation he'd overheard.

"Bro, Faber's cooler than I imagined! Can you picture it? Being at center ice face off with the big windows in the back? Well… One of you guys'd be at center ice. I'd be in the net."

Once again, Dex hesitated, but this time Chris was expecting it and it was easier to remind himself that all of them had their own reasons for being nervous, and that didn't make him less likely to get accepted.

"I mean, I guess it's alright. But I'm still, uh, leaning towards a state school or somewhere less… preppy." There was a long pause before Dex added, "D-didn't you say you went to like one of those preppy private schools? Or something?"

In lieu of an answer, Chris reached for his phone. "Hey, it's Dex, right?" He said, with one glance to see if the name Nursey had used was okay with Will. It seemed okay, judging by the raised eyebrow and slight nod he got in response. "Could you take my picture? I can't get over how 'swawesome those windows are!"

When the team manager’s voice cut across them, Chris was certain he had messed up. He was assuming his place on a team that surely wouldn't want him and appropriating their slang terms and now he was babbling his apology and explanations with little idea of which words were actually leaving his mouth and no control to stop them. Only the loud entrance of two new arrivals saved him, and Chris hung back as others flocked to see what the goodie bags were.

"Dude. You're good."

She had snuck up on him again, but this time her words, though short, were reassuring.

"Thanks. Er… it's Larissa, right?"

"Call me Lardo. The other boys do. I saw your tapes. I'm supposed to make sure you fill in a scholarship application form if it'll help persuade you to come here."

Chris vaguely wondered why his jaw hadn't hit the floor. "You want… Me? I'm… No, you don't know. If you… You wouldn't really want me."

She didn't even say anything but Chris felt the question burning in her look and was unable to leave it unanswered.

"I'm trans." He spoke the words in a soft, vulnerable tone that was reserved for coming out.

She nodded slowly. "Dude, this is Samwell. You identify as anything that isn't female and want to be on the men’s hockey team, that's cool. All we care about is if you can play hockey. So. The scholarship?" She held out a form. Chris stared at it for a moment, before glancing at Dex who was finally in conversation with some of the other visitors, albeit looking incredibly uncomfortable.

"Boy," he told her, first. "I identify as male. He/his pronouns. I had surgery in November and that’s why I was out of a bit of the season just after Thanksgiving break. So if you really want me anyway… Wow. You actually want me. This is… 'swawesome." He grinned, and could see her smiling back at him, no more comments on his choice of words. "Wow. Thanks. I don't need the scholarship. I'm good for it. Give it to Dex. I mean… If you want him to have it, that is, but you should give it to someone who wouldn't be able to play without it and I think money's an issue for him where it's not for me or Nursey. Not that I should really tell you not to give it to someone else when he said he was going to apply for it and maybe his parents are funny about it or something but..." He was rambling again, and Lardo was raising an eyebrow. "Sorry. Shi— uh. Sorry. I'm going to just go and get one of those goodie bags!"

His cheeks burned as he ran over to the box full of welcome packs, but when Dex asked him what was up, he just shook his head and shoved a mini pie in his mouth, chewing until he felt his heart rate even out.

"Wow, this is the best pie ever. I'd sign up here just based on this!" He pulled his phone out to register, ignoring the bemused looks Dex was throwing him. Maybe pie wasn't the real reason he was now certain Samwell was the only place he belonged next year, but it was definitely a sign that these people could become his family, if Lardo’s words were genuine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings:
> 
> \- Dex is surprised Lardo is the team manager, and as a result Chris worries that Dex might be racist and/or sexist  
> \- Throughout the chapter, Chowder is worried that he will be rejected for being trans  
> \- He comes out to Lardo more out of a feeling of obligation than anything else, and it goes well  
> \- Dex is worried about being able to afford Samwell; meanwhile, Nursey says that he is planning on applying for the hockey scholarship even though he doesn't need it.


	2. Frogs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris moves into Samwell, and starts to get to know his fellow teammates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Underage drinking in this chapter, and conversations about diet and religion.

By the time he had got to his hotel the evening of the Samwell tour, Chris had received three friendship requests on Facebook - Justin Oluransi, Adam Birkholtz and Eric Bittle. Larissa Duan popped up immediately as a suggested friend, and by the end of the week Chris was friends with the entire current Samwell Men’s Hockey team other than Jack Zimmermann (who Chris had looked for and found so many accounts he had no idea which was real, and besides he was a little too intimidated to actually add the hockey star), at least half the rugby team, and a number of Samwell swimmers. Derek Nurse had added him on a barely used account about ten minutes after a B. Knight accepted him, and instantly had sent him a message to say that he, too, had enrolled in the 2018 class. He had found William J. Poindexter and sent him a request, but never got an acceptance notification. A private message from Lardo had told him that Dex had still been uncertain whether he would pick Samwell even after she had basically told him he was a shoo-in for the scholarship. The day after Samwell was eliminated from the playoffs, Chris and Nursey had found themselves in a group chat with the team. They were told to call them by their hockey nicknames, Chris had been christened ‘Chowder’ and B. “Shitty” Knight had informed them that Jack didn’t do social media, and, even if he did, was currently moping too much to be trusted in a group chat with rookies. 

It was July when Dex finally added him back and sent him a message saying he was going to Samwell. He also had a message from a Dan Poindexter that simply said “Take care of my brother and don’t let him drop out of school.” When Chris tried to add him, he said it wasn’t a good idea, and that ended their short acquaintance. A few hours later, Lardo had added Dex to the group chat, though he was noticeable only by his silence in the message box for the first few days. 

Chris’s second journey up to Samwell felt like coming home. His parents and Shelley flew out with him, each using their checked luggage allowance to take another bag of Chris’s things, and they rented an SUV to get it all from Logan to his freshman dorm. His was a single, despite advice from Ransom and Holster to go for an athletic suite and messages from both Nursey and Dex confirming they had gone for that option. Chris wanted privacy only a single could give him, and none of the worry that came with having to live with people he didn't know yet. 

It took the whole afternoon to unpack and set up his room and go and buy the things they either hadn't been able to fit in the luggage allowance, or that Chris had forgotten. Then, before he could process what was happening, he was on his own. 

He lay on his bed, clutching S.J. Sharkie to his chest for a while. At some point it was sure to dawn on him that his family really had gone, already halfway to Worcester to visit some old friend of his parents. For now, though, his room just felt like a Sharks themed hotel room, and that he’d be back in California by the next week. 

The screen of his phone was still black, and he must have stared at it for the past five minutes. All Chris wanted to do was text his new teammates and hang out with someone but the only person who had sent him a message so far that day was Bitty, who was still in Georgia. Asking other people if they were free, especially people he had only met once, many months before, seemed like it would be overly clingy and it made him nervous enough that it was another three and a half minutes before he brought up the group SMS he had created with Nursey and Dex a week before. The chat was sparse so far, with only awkward questions about what the others were bringing and when they were arriving. 

> **Frog Chat**  
>  _Chris (6:17pm)_  
>  I’m all moved in!! 
> 
> _Dex (6:24pm)_  
>  What are you doing for dinner? 
> 
> _Chris (6:25pm)_  
>  I haven’t decided yet! Why? 
> 
> _Dex (6:26pm)_  
>  Not ready to go just yet but come round here and we can go get something together in a bit.  
>  Block B, suite 2. 

Chris didn’t wait to see what Nursey said, or to reply. He pulled his sneakers on and was out the door immediately to go over to the right block. He shot Dex a message as he walked up to the building, and a moment later the door was being opened for him by Dex, who looked just as awkward as he had all those months ago outside of Faber. 

“We’re right here,” Dex said, showing Chris straight to another door before he could say hello, or make any small talk. 

“Have you heard from— Nursey!” Chris grinned as his eyes fell on the very person he had been about to ask about. Nursey was lounged across the sofa, a book against his knee which he looked up from to smile back. 

“Yo, Chowder. How’s it going?” 

“What are you— You two are in the same room?” Chris knew that a hint of jealousy and disappointment tainted his otherwise curious question, but he reminded himself why he had wanted a single in the first place. He still didn’t really know these boys and whether they would accept him when they knew him was had yet to be determined. 

“Apparently they try and put people with at least one other person from the same team if it works out. We don’t know who else will be in here yet, but, uh, yeah.” Dex didn’t seem terribly happy. “I guess we’re going to be spending a lot of time together anyway, being d-partners. We, uh, might as well go all out?” 

“Are you worried we’ll get sick of each other, Poindexter?” Nursey asked. Dex went pink and his shoulders tensed. Remembering their brief altercation at the tour of Faber, Chris had a feeling he was biting back a retort. Hopefully a few days of getting used to each other, and they would get along well with each other, rather than them reaching a point where those bitten back retorts were snapped out. They already knew about the infamy of Ransom and Holster’s d-partner broship. Eventually, that would be Nursey and Dex. All Chris had to do was stop them forming bad impressions of each other these first few days. 

* * *

Though the whole of the Samwell Men's Hockey team were back on campus by the next afternoon, the frogs hadn't yet received their invitation to go to the frat house. They met members of the team in the dining halls but their free time ended up being spent just the three of them. Chris already knew that Nursey explained his diet in a very long winded way that Dex had summarised in three words ("...So you're vegan."), but he pulled a face at the label and shook his head, even though neither Chris nor Dex could figure out the difference. He also knew that Dex had brought exactly three photos and one map of Maine to put up on his wall, which looked strange compared to the montage of photos, quotes, magazine cutouts, posters and post-it's that covered Nursey’s side of the defensemen’s shared room. He knew that Dex always went for a run before breakfast and Nursey went to the gym every afternoon. He knew that Dex tensed up at the slightest hint of a sensitive topic, and that Nursey bowled into such issues without a care. He also knew, with a certainty that increased every day, that these two boys who still didn’t get on with each other were quickly becoming Chris's best friends. 

At their third breakfast, Shitty leaned across Ollie and Wicks to instruct the frogs that they should be at the "Haus" half an hour after breakfast for their tour. From across the table, Ransom rolled his eyes. 

"Brah, why can't they just come back with us?" 

Shitty considered the question for a while. "They just can't. They have to make their own way there." 

"We'll all be walking in the same direction, Shits." 

Chris exchanged a look with Dex and Nursey as the upperclassmen continued to argue. 

"This happens every year. You'll walk back with us." The low, calm voice startled Chris, who looked around to find Jack Zimmermann staring right at him. Intimidated as he was, it felt rude not to reply to his captain. 

"Oh! Um… Okay!" His eyes were wide. A foot collided with his shin and a snicker from Nursey reminded him that he was gaping. 

"Chill, C." 

"You should eat those eggs before everyone is ready to go," Jack added. He then frowned at Nursey’s plate. "You can't just eat fruit. You need some protein" 

Dex choked back a laugh as Nursey's smirk dropped. His normally chill demeanour was ruffled and he raised an awkward hand to run through his curly hair. "I had oatmeal, too. With soy milk." 

Jack looked satisfied, but Bitty now joined the conversation looking slightly alarmed. "Soy milk? It's better with cow's milk, Nursey, really. Full fat, not the fake 2% stuff." 

"Bittle, full fat is—" 

"Don't you start Jack Zimmermann, I think I know—" 

"Yeah, I'm allergic to dairy," Nursey cut across before it could turn into a rant. Bitty looked horrified, and Chris clearly wasn't the only person worried he might fall off his chair, given the way Holster’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. 

"He's vegan, too," Dex offered to a sea of stunned hockey players. 

"I'm not—" 

"You don't eat meat, fish, eggs or dairy. You're fucking vegan." 

"But it's not as _strict_ as that. And it's not for the whole philosophy of veganism, it's a bit of a religious thing and mostly an upbringing thing, with the added health benefits and the fact that the meat industry is horrific, but I wouldn't sit and go hungry in a restaurant if they didn't have anything vegan, or whatever. Dairy's the only one I really couldn't have. Well, and I’d never eat beef or pork." 

"What religion are you?" Chris asked, surprised this hadn't come up yet, though he quickly backtracked. "I'm sorry! Is that rude to ask? I went to a Christian high school and we went to church once or twice but I'm not actually religious so if that's-" 

"Chill, C. It's okay. I was raised half Hindu and half Muslim, so it's always been a bit complicated for me. I think I lean more Muslim in beliefs, and definitely the communities I ended up fitting into back home were the Black Muslim ones, more than the Gujarati Hindu ones, but I do keep up Hindu practises, too, where I can, and a lot of Hindus, like my ma, are lacto vegetarian. When I say I'd never eat beef or pork, though, beef eating is sort of taboo in Hinduism, and pork isn't halal for Muslims, which means it's prohibited." 

Chris nodded to show that he had understood. It sounded very complicated to him, as someone who had grown up with barely one religion, let alone two.

"Isn't alcohol prohibited too?" Dex asked, with an eyebrow raised. Their first night Nursey had convinced them that they should all go and get some vodka to celebrate settling into Samwell. The store they ended up at was IDing and so hadn't been able to, but the intention had still been there. 

"Yeah, well," Nursey shrugged. "How about you, Poindexter? Let me guess. Catholic?" 

Dex shifted uncomfortably. "Fuck. I guess? I haven't been to mass or confession since I was twelve." He looked down at his empty plate with a strange twist on his face. Chris frowned. The look was a mix between pain and yearning, though neither made sense, at least from Chris's experience of church. Before he could ask, the rest of the team were standing as a loud rabble which gained looks from other tables in the dining hall. Ransom and Holster took it upon themselves to herd the frogs out the door, affirming Jack's prediction that they'd end up going straight to the Haus. 

Before they got to the porch, Shitty stopped the three of them in a dramatic speech about their first time in the Haus, and what they should expect there. Chris tried to hang onto every word, especially after it was hinted that they would need to know the place inside out for their hazing, but there was a lot of information to take in, and a lot of strange traditions that would take time to get used to. 

The tour started in the living room, and then went down to the basement where they were shown the bylaws written on a wall. They then went upstairs, having a peek in each of the bedrooms before finally returning to the kitchen where Bitty had a pie waiting for them, and was talking rapidly from the moment they entered. 

"Now, I've never done one without using real butter before but I just tried one out using some margarine I had that says it’s vegan on the tub. You'll have to wait a bit, Nursey, 'cause it's only just gone in the oven, I'm afraid. I hope blueberries are okay. That’s all I had left after doing the other ones, but I can send one of the boys out for a Stop and Shop trip if need be. I'm going to perfect vegan baking before the end of this semester, I promise. I've already started a board on Pinterest.” 

"Oh, you didn't have to—" Nursey started as Chris and Dex both took their plates of non-butter-free pie. 

"Derek Nurse, every one a this team eats my pies and you will not be an exception!" 

“You _really_ don’t have to—” 

"They're really great, Nursey," Chris told him, through a mouthful. "Did you never have the one from the taddy tour?" 

"Nah, I gave it to my mom. She liked it." 

“Bro, seriously,” Holster joined in, “you have to eat Bitty’s pies. It’s a team rule. Shitty, we need to add it to the bylaws. Even Jack eats Bitty’s pies and he once said that sugar is the root of all evil.” 

The captain in question looked up from his history textbook with a frown on his face. “I’ve never said that.” 

“It’s just pie. I can go without—” 

_“Nursey!”_ Bitty’s voice was frantic now, and Nursey fell silent, taken aback. 

“Blueberries are great,” he said weakly. “Thanks, Bitty.” 

* * *

Their days were packed now that they had Haus access and the promise of pre-season and class shopping. Chris soon learned, however, that student life was to be much more than just hockey and school. The day after their Haus tour, Chris, Dex and Nursey walked back to the Haus to find the kitchen surfaces covered in shopping bags, all full of red solo cups, soda and alcohol. Bitty had Beyoncé playing through some speakers as he flitted around the kitchen, though he grumbled about how he had to keep the volume down because Jack had complained. 

“Frogs!” Shitty looked delighted that they were there. “The first unofficial kegster of the year is tonight, and your attendance is mandatory!” 

Nursey was already nodding, but Dex went tense in the jaw, and Chris blinked in confusion. “Wait… What’s a kegster?” 

A strange noise left Bitty, who started to tap at his phone with an amused smile. Shitty threw his arm around Chris. For a moment, he flinched at the contact, but he forced himself to relax and look up at his older teammate. 

“Young Chowder, words cannot be used to describe what an experience you are in for tonight. Unfortunately, I can’t stick around to chat. Tub juice won’t make itself.” 

Chris didn’t feel that his question had been answered. He turned to Nursey for help. 

“Party. Alcohol. Kegs. There’s probably not much more to it, knowing Shitty. He’s just being dramatic.” 

* * *

It turned out that Nursey was right, but the kegster was still very different to any party Chris had been to back in California. There were so many athletes in the Haus that it was hard to move around the first floor, and the main drink available was a strange green color. To begin with, Bitty hadn’t been letting Chris anywhere near it, though both Nursey and Dex had immediately ended up drinking some. It only took one minute of Bitty being distracted by someone messing around in his kitchen for Ransom to plant a solo cup into Chris's hand and for him to be steered into the living room where there was a make-shift dance floor. Every time Shitty saw the three frogs together, he took the opportunity to tell them another story, most of which were about Jack at one of the few past kegsters he had actually gone to. As for Jack himself, Chris had seen him once so far that evening, and all he had done was ask if the frogs were drinking, told them to have some water, and then skulked back upstairs.

The kegster was, more than anything else, an opportunity to get to know the teammates who Chris hadn't talked to much so far. The team’s backup goalie - a sophomore, Vizzy - had been very quiet the previous times Chris had met him, but with pop music blaring in the background, he was enthusiastic in pulling Chris onto the dance floor where he sang at the top of his voice. He could see Dex and Nursey being pulled into a cluster with all three established defensive partnerships. Bitty, dancing not that far away from them, looked tiny in comparison. The soccer players and boxer who shared Dex and Nursey's suite were all there, though didn't acknowledge Chris at all. He was just trying to push past a group of baseball players when Lardo demanded the frogs play a game of beer pong against her.

They lost horrifically.

He had no idea how many hours had passed by the time the three of them were stumbling back to the freshman dorms, with Ollie and Wicks following them on strict orders from Jack to make sure the younger students were back safely before they returned to their shared sophomore dorm. Dex and Nursey had their arms around each other - more for support than anything else, but it encouraged Chris to think that maybe this would spark a real friendship between the two - and every few steps Dex had to grab onto Chris’s arm to steady himself against Nursey’s trips and stumbles. When Chris had said goodbye to them at the door to his single, he staggered straight over to his bed and collapsed onto it, still fully dressed. 


	3. Pre-Season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys start playing some hockey, and sign up for classes. Nursey and Dex still aren't getting along, much to Chris's disappointment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [1 and 4 conversation](http://omgeverythingplease.tumblr.com/post/147461745260/tweet-1-2-3-4-5) takes place in this chapter. Contains ignorance/homophobia/transphobia. Also talk of anxiety, and Bitty's concussion.

Practice had started in earnest now, and Chris was overjoyed to be back on the ice every day. College hockey was all the good bits of what he had already experienced of the game, with none of the same struggles he had faced in high school, and a higher standard of play to challenge himself with which he had been missing out on in the Sharks High School Hockey Varsity League.

Playing with Jack Zimmermann was something Chris would probably never get over, but it was when Bitty was cleared to play, having suffered a concussion before the summer, that it became really obvious just how good a player Jack was. Bitty wasn’t even supposed to be one of the first line, but in practice the two worked together with a synchronicity that was rare for two forwards. Between Bitty’s speed and Jack’s accuracy, Chris had no idea how he was going to learn to save his goal against them. The first time he managed it, on Bitty’s third practise, it was a massive fluke. Ransom and Holster pulled him into an overwhelmingly tight celly all the same.

That evening, they were at the Haus playing Mario Kart when Shitty bounded down the stairs. “This is for that beaut of a save earlier, Chowder,” he said, and he threw something which Chris caught instinctively. In his hand was a puck. His eyes widened and he let it fall to the floor, remembering all the games which had solidified his superstition that touching pucks off the ice was bad luck.

"Johnson saved it from a shutout game last year. It's always been a bit of a tradition that a puck gets passed on from one goalie to the next, but Johnson said that this year we should do it after your first great save in practice instead of after your first shutout game. I can't remember what reason he gave. Something about—"

“Sorry.” Chris cut across him. “Can I wash my hands? Please?” Then, because he could feel the whole room staring at him even though his own eyes were still on the puck on the floor, he stuttered out another “Sorry.” Were they offended? 

“What the fuck, bro?”

_“Holster.”_

“No, but he has a point. What just happened?”

Chris looked around sheepishly. “I just can't… I need to wash my hands”

It was Jack that finally spoke up this time. “Of course you can, Chowder. Nobody's going to judge other people's rituals, _right?”_ The last word was sharp but clearly directed at the rest of the team. “Hockey's always been a superstitious sport. Go wash your hands.”

Chris’s cheeks burned but he shot Jack a grateful smile before he ran to the kitchen to wash his hands.

By the time he returned to the living room, he had calmed down enough to explain, “I don't touch pucks off the ice.”

It was clear that many of his teammates still didn’t understand but they were too scared of what Jack might do if they said anything so they nodded politely.

“That's fine, brah,” Shitty told him. “Sorry for making you do that.”

* * *

To his relief, the team knowing about Chris's puck superstition didn't affect either practices or off-ice relations, which was especially comforting when classes started the next week. Chris had a computer science class with Dex, and all three frogs had decided to get their obligatory key skills class out of the way first semester. Nursey was taking a poetry class which Dex chirped him mercilessly for, but he had confided to Chris that English Literature was probably going to be his major because it had been his best subject at Andover. Chris, for his part, enrolled in beginner's Mandarin Chinese, in the hope that it would connect him with his roots. Samwell, unfortunately, didn't offer Cantonese.

The last afternoon before their official first day of classes, the team went to the quad next to the lake, or the "Beach" as Chris was informed it should be called.

"Oh, wow, it's nothing like our beaches in California!" he said, with wide eyes. Dex snorted, and a few of the older teammates glanced at him, uncertain if he was joking or not.

"Anyway..." Shitty said.

Ransom cut across with a sound of disgust. "Incoming, bros."

Chris turned his head to see a group of athletes, some of whom he recognized as lacrosse players. One of them took a set of bocce balls out of the case and they started setting up a game.

"Seriously?" Holster groaned. "Bocce ball?"

Ransom muttered an insult under his breath. Chris looked around in confusion.

"And why do we hate the lacrosse team?" Dex asked. Shitty immediately started a tale detailing the long and bitter rivalry between the Samwell Men's Hockey Team and the Samwell Men's Lacrosse Team. From what Chris could tell, none of them really knew when or how it had actually started, but their frat houses had been opposite each other ever since the hockey team moved into the previously-abandoned Theta Alpha Theta sorority house, and there had been animosity between them ever since. 

* * *

He had hoped that the start of classes might help Nursey and Dex have something other than hockey to bond over, but after their first week, they were still grating on each other at every opportunity. On the Saturday, Chris finally started to understand where Nursey was coming from, though it pained him to think badly of Dex.

They had just been talking about their week when Dex had looked over at the upperclassmen. “This girl said something to me yesterday. And I just… So… That one and four thing about Samwell. It's not true, is it?”

Chris stilled. One in four students at Samwell, and maybe more, identify as LGBT. It was why he was here. That couldn’t be what Dex was referring to, could it?

“What do you mean?” Holster asked, and his voice was icy, as if his thoughts were in a similar place to Chris's. 

“I mean… there's twenty-three people on our team, right? So that would be six… gay people. That's not right.”

“What's not right about it?” Ransom asked sharply. Chris saw him shoot Bitty a concerned look, but Bitty was engrossed in his phone - or focusing on it to stop himself from having to join the conversation.

“I don't mean it's… I didn't mean it like that!” Dex looked horrified as he tried to backtrack, but Chris felt sick in his stomach. He knew all too well how defensive bigots could be. “Just that I know the team now and I can't think of six people who could be-”

“That's heteronormative bullcrap,” Holster growled. “I can tell you myself that I know of four members of our team who identify as LGBT and that's not including Lardo or anyone who hasn't come out to me yet. You’re right that only one of those definitely identifies as ‘gay’, rather than it being six, but the other three are still-”

“Wait… Who?”

“I'm not going to out any of them to you without their permission, Poindexter!”

Dex had the decency to look sheepish, until Nursey piped up, “Am I included in your count?”

“I don't know how you identify,” Holster told him.

“I don't really label it, you know? But I'm not straight. I'm almost definitely on the ace spectrum, but somewhere in the gray area and when it comes to gender… it's complicated. I'd just say queer, I think. I dated an enby last year with no sex involved and I've kissed girls but never been able to do casual hookups with them and never met one I wanted to date. The only person I have slept with was a guy, and that's...” He suddenly stopped talking, his expression that of someone who just said too much.

Dex choked on his pie. “Jesus, Nurse.”

“That's cool to know,” Ransom said, pointedly ignoring Dex. “And don’t feel like you have to tell us more than you’re comfortable with.”

“You dated an enby?” Chris felt his hopes rise. Dex wasn’t showing himself to be terribly accepting, but Nursey certainly was.

“Yeah. Taylor. They were on one of the hockey teams we played against a lot from Andover.”

“What’s an enby?” Dex looked almost nervous about the answer, as if he was worried about them turning on him.

“Non-binary. Neither fully male nor fully female.”

“Like intersex?”

“Oh my God, _no._ Taylor is agender. They don’t have a gender at all.”

“But… people just _are_ male or female.”

“Yeah, and I bet genitals determine that, too, right?” Nursey said it with a roll of the eyes that showed he didn't believe that, but Chris flinched.

Dex just looked confused. “Well and hormones. Biology. I don't…”

“That's sex,” Chris interrupted, finally pushed beyond his limit of listening quietly, even though he had never been very good at explaining the difference to people. “Biological sex and gender are different. What your sense of your gender is... it doesn't matter what your body is like; you can feel like you're male or female or both or neither. And sex can be changed. That’s how gender reassignment surgery works, by changing your biology, but it’s not really changing your _gender,_ just your genitals and hormones so that your biology outwardly matches your actual gender, or how society expects your gender to look, anyway.”

Dex nodded slowly, but Chris had no idea if he really understood. He was tired, though, and that's why when Ransom opened his mouth to join in, Chris searched for a topic change. “You have really big ears, Dex,” was the best he could come up with on the fly.

Dex spluttered and Nursey laughed. “Yo, chill, Chowder, that's how he was born.”

Dex chirped back that at least he had never let his ears go cold for the sake of aesthetic and they relaxed into a new conversation.

 _He's your friend,_ Chris reminded himself as he let the others talk around him. _He's your friend and he's been good to you, and he just doesn't understand. You know he has his own issues with money and class privilege that you don't have to worry about. He was raised Catholic and at least he's not throwing Bibles at anyone who suggests they might not be cis or straight. It's just Dex._

When he looked over at Bitty, he had a feeling that he was telling himself a very similar mantra.

“Chowder? Are you okay?”

The defensemen had retreated into the living room, and Bitty had come to sit at the table with Chris by now.

“I was just thinking,” he said with a shrug.

Bitty hesitated for a moment. “About what Dex said?”

“You just sometimes forget that not everyone knows things like that, don’t you?” It was a vague question, but Bitty seemed to understand.

“It was real hard to go back to Georgia this summer for that exact reason.”

Chris let out a sigh.

“Chowder, if you ever want to talk about anything-”

“Thanks, Bitty, but I’m okay.”

“You probably assumed this anyway, and I know the boys like to try and set me up on dates, so maybe you’ve heard them, too, but I’m gay. I guess I’m the one Holster knows about who’s gay as opposed to… I don’t even know. I didn’t realize there were others in the team, actually. But they were all real supportive when I first came out to them. If you wanted them to use any other pronouns or… I don't know. They totally would, either way.”

Chris nodded, but still didn’t say anything. “Thanks, Bitty.”

* * *

In the days that followed, Chris let himself forget about Dex’s opinions and ignorance. He made up for it with team spirit and when he fixed Bitty’s oven, it was hard to imagine him thinking badly of their small, blond teammate. His smile was too genuine when he saw Bitty happy and grateful. Chris, for his part, was struggling to see why anyone could hold Bitty's sexuality against him, considering how much he had gone out of his way to make them feel welcome. Their first day of classes, he had made them lunch bags, and quickly Chris learned to expect the sight of Bitty baking at all hours of the day. As far as Chris could tell, Dex appreciated this just as much as he did, and he couldn't see any change to that even after Ransom brought up a guy he wanted to set Bitty up with in front of them. Dex didn't turn a hair at the comment, and a little later he offered to go and buy more butter for the Haus.

On the other hand, Dex and Nursey still bickered like it would kill them to get along. Chris wasn’t sure whether they fought more in the privacy of their dorm room, or if they just avoided each other if he was elsewhere. They went on their first roadie for a preseason game against Princeton, only for the two of them to argue the whole time, even on the ice, and though both of them promised that they would never do that in season, Chris was starting to worry. He didn’t want to bother Jack with such issues, or get either of them in trouble when he was fairly sure only he had noticed their on-ice altercation, but he knew that if they failed to sort things out between themselves, it could start to affect the team.

Chris went to practice one morning with a new resolution to talk to Bitty immediately afterwards. He knew that they were not going to get a time alone to talk before, and so he tried to just focus on blocking goals and practicing new plays, even though in his mind he couldn’t help but recite what he wanted to say later. He braced himself as Coach Murray blew the whistle and Bitty and Dex started skating drills. Bitty was fast and nobody could normally catch him, but Dex had been working on his speed recently, and it showed. The defenseman brushed against the forward as he stretched out to overtake him and the next moment, Bitty was lying on the ice. Chris caught Dex’s eye, and saw the moment that his friend realized what had happened - mostly because of Chris leaving his posts. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but all the other times he had gone down, it was from a hard enough check that they could assume it was at least partly physical force. This time, Dex had barely touched him, as he was now saying to Coach Murray with a worried frown

“Wow… That’s the second time this week…” Chris said.

“Chowder, relax,” Ransom said, but Chris wasn’t sure how to relax, as he watched Bitty skate off the ice, head hung low on his way to the coaches’ office.

“Jack, bro,” Holster started.

“I know. I’ll deal with it, okay?”

Chris looked between the three upperclassmen in confusion and concern, but saw no answers to all his questions.

Finally, Ransom felt his stare on them and turned back to him. “Bitty took a really bad hit last year. He used to do this all the time and Jack worked him through it. Got him over the block, but then he took that hit and got a concussion. The one that he had to be cleared from to skate last month. Just don’t- He doesn’t need everyone talking about it, eh? He’s not going to get kicked off the team. We’re not going to let that happen. He just needs us to be his friends right now, and not put pressure on him to deal with it in the wrong way.”

Chris frowned, but nodded. He could just be Bitty’s friend, and not expect him to fix other members of the team for the moment. At least now, Dex and Nursey were getting along, or at least that’s how it looked from where they muttered seriously to each other on the edge of the ice. They could be civil when it counted.

* * *

“Tomorrow, four a.m., Bittle. Don’t be up baking all night.”

Jack called the words over his shoulder as he came into the living room. A whimper responded from the kitchen, followed by the sound of dough being thrown down onto a worktop. Chris stared at his captain.

“Why-” When Jack looked up at him, one eyebrow raised, Chris fell silent. It was disrespectful to question him, wasn’t it?

“Checking practise.”

Chris felt his mouth go dry. He realized that this was probably what Ransom had meant when he said that Jack had worked Bitty through his previous problems, but Bitty had been baking for a long time that afternoon, and the reaction he was having to the prospect of checking practice didn’t encourage Chris that it was a good idea. “Will that help him?” he asked. The uncertainty in his voice was clear.

Jack went pale.

It was Holster who responded, his voice sharper than usual. “Yes. It helped before, and he’s still better now than he was before.”

Jack muttered something in rapid French. Chris didn’t understand a word, but Holster rolled his eyes, and Ransom stood up, grabbed Chris’s arm and dragged him toward the kitchen, whispering as they went. “Don’t say shit like that to Jack, okay? He’s a fucking good captain.”

“I know that. I just… Oh god, does he think I think he’s…”

“Okay, the first thing you gotta understand? Is that he’s really sensitive.” He glanced over at Bitty, then pulled Chris out onto the porch before he carried on. “You don’t grow up Bad Bob’s son without a lot of pressure on your back, and when it comes to making decisions as a captain, and especially where Bitty’s concerned, he worries. He got him through checking, only for him to be set back again over a risky play _Jack_ decided to do. But honestly, we don’t have any other options here. Bitty gets over this the quickest way we know how, or they’re not going to be able to justify having him on the team anymore. It doesn’t matter how fast he is, or how good a shooter, or how good a team player. If he freezes up the moment someone comes close to him, he can’t play a contact sport. Jack will do what he needs to to keep Bitty on the team, and trust us when we say it will work. Bitty will complain his ass off about the early mornings, but he’ll keep doing it, because he knows it helps. You don’t need to worry about him. Jack knows more than anyone about things like this.”

Chris frowned and opened his mouth, but Ransom held his hand up.

“Not checking phobia, granted, but he still went through Juniors, and he’s been playing the game since he could walk. He knows how to get people through mental blocks, and he definitely understands anxiety. _And_ that different people need different things. But he doesn't need people questioning his decisions because that's when he starts doubting himself and we really don't want to see that happen.”

There was a pause as Chris processed these words, then he nodded. “Okay. I'm sorry.” Ransom ruffled his hair up with an affectionate smile.

* * *

Over the next few days, Chris tried to figure out what it was Bitty needed from him as a friend. He was now very reluctant once more to talk to him about Nursey and Dex’s issues, but he had discovered that Bitty enjoyed mothering the team. So, now that it was starting to get chilly outside and Chris had found himself craving cookies and tea, he figured that there was a distraction for Bitty in that craving.

“It’s a bit chilly now, isn’t it?” he said to Dex as they left the computer science building.

“Uh… Well, I’m from Maine so this is still pretty warm by my standards,” Dex told him with a smirk. “Do you want my jacket?”

“Oh! No, no, I’ll be fine. I was just going to go on over to the Haus. It’s not that far. I can manage until there.”

“Seriously, C, I don’t need it. If you’re cold, take it. We’re going to have to get you a proper winter coat so you can survive a Northern winter, aren’t we?” his tone was light and teasing, but the way he held out the jacket was stubborn to the point where Chris couldn’t refuse it. Plus, it was very warm, and when Chris shoved his hands in the pockets he found that they had started to go painfully numb with just his hoodie for warmth before.

“Are you coming with me?”

“No, I’m going to head on over to Founders and get this homework done. I’ll see you later.”

Chris nodded and walked to the Haus by himself. He was glad to find the teammate he had been looking for already in the kitchen.

“Hi Bitty!”

“Chowder! How was your class?”

“It was really good. And then I thought I really want cookies so I came to see if there are any here. Oh, but I’m not… It’s okay if there’s not. I’ll go to Stop and Shop.”

“My word, you will _not_ go to Stop and Shop. Sit yourself down. It won’t take me long to make some cookies.”

Chris hid his smile in the cuff of Dex’s jacket as Bitty pulled ingredients from the cabinets. “That’s really nice of you, Bitty. You know, people just give me stuff all the time? Dex gave me his jacket today because I said it was chilly. I’d be okay if you all didn’t do that for me, but it’s really nice that you do. It feels like family, at Samwell, which is weird because I love my actual family, you know?”

He was winging it, but the look on Bitty’s face suggested that he had been saying some of the right things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Dex has a lot to learn bless his heart  
> 2\. Holster doesn't really speak French all that well, but he took it as his language elective in both high school and at Samwell instead of German (at high school because he knew he wanted to play juniors in Canada and at Samwell because he'd already done some French at high school and had got used to hearing it a bit when he played GOJHL. His sisters both took German because of its similarity to Yiddish). His comprehension is good especially when it comes to the vague 'I'm doubting what decision I've made' statements Jack sometimes says. Ransom speaks it as a 2nd language, but nowhere near as well as Jack speaks English.


	4. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris turns 19.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter:   
> \- Hints of ableism and racism   
> \- Implication of child neglect  
> \- Dex and Nursey swear at each other like every other sentence  
> \- And Dex gets angry  
> \- Honestly these frogs are all messes in their own ways  
> \- anyway more details in the notes at the end of the chapter
> 
> Also, there are a number of religious festivals which take place in the background and I don't belong to any of the religions mentioned so hopefully everything is correct and all there~

September faded into October and Samwell became more and more like home. His team - his family away from home - settled into chirps and parties and bonding sessions that made him wonder how he had ever had a life before meeting them. New family meant new tradition, and so Chris found himself celebrating Jewish New Year, and just over a week later there was a merging of cultures when Yom Kippur fell at the same time as Eid Al-Adha, meaning that the Jewish members of the team were fasting while Nursey and one of the other forwards, Jell-o, were celebrating a holiday that revolved around food. As none of them could go to practice or class, Holster and Nursey spent a good deal of the day sat on the floor of the attic talking to each other. Ransom joked that he shouldn't go to labs if it meant Nursey was going to steal his bro away.

There was also thinking about the future, in both his families. Chris spent an hour on the phone to Shelley, trying to persuade her that, as her brother, he would support her whatever she decided to do about grad school. Later the same day he found himself looking at Jack and considering the same question, of what next year was going to be like. It felt too early in the year to be thinking of such things, but Jack and Shitty had been preparing for graduation almost the whole time Chris had known them.

“Jack… I was just wondering? And you don’t have to answer, but is it hard thinking about going into the NHL, or is it cool?” Jack blinked at him in surprise, and Chris quickly added, “Sorry.”

“A bit of both. It’ll be different to Samwell, but it’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“I hope I end up good enough to be able to consider the NHL. It sounds like it would be hard, though, and I don’t know if I would like to pick a team to play for if they weren’t the Sharks.”

Jack pulled a face that Chris suspected was supposed to be a smile, but it ended up looking a little unnatural. “It’s not easy, but you’ll get there, Chowder.”

“Oh! Um… thank-you!”

There was a snigger behind him and Chris looked to see Shitty. “Bro, don’t make our star goalie pass out before we’ve even played a game. Chowder, man, we’re watching some of the games tonight. Your team are playing, aren’t they? Drag Dex and Nursey along, will you?”

“S-sure.”

* * *

That Friday, Chris woke to his phone buzzing.

“Morning, mom,” he said, without even looking at the phone ID.

“Happy birthday, Chrissy! I’m up early to go to Seattle for the weekend, and I thought I’d check in with my nineteen year-old. It’s not too early, is it? I didn’t wake you up?”

“I have practice,” Chris told her, skirting around the fact that she had, indeed, woken him up. “Thanks for ringing. Seattle? Is that for work?”

“It is, yes. Have you got any plans for today?”

“Uh…” Chris winced. He hadn’t actually told anyone that today would be his birthday, and he knew that he had taken it off his Facebook profile a couple of years ago so nobody would know. He was happy without them making a fuss about it. “Just practice and class and then hanging out with the boys. Nothing special.”

“Well you have fun, baby. I won’t be able to ring later, but call your father, okay? And Shelley wanted me to let you know to look out for her present in the post.”

“Okay. Thanks, mom.”

* * *

To his disappointment, when he got to practice it was clear that Dex and Nursey had had another argument, and that this time it was a big one, but when Chris tried to push it in the locker room, all he got out of Dex was “He’s crazy, C. He’s actually crazy. _God._ ”

Chris pulled Nursey back while one of the coaches was talking to the forwards about a power play and Ransom was showing Dex a stick technique. “What happened with you and Dex?”

“Nothing, C. Chill. He’s just so uptight anything I do would piss him off.”

“Uptight?”

“You know he vacuums every morning? He woke me up with it today. And the other day he organized my desk because it was ‘bugging him’ how I had my notes spread out. But if I try and bring up to him that he could compromise on things, or that it was shitty of him to spout that all lives matter crap right in front of Ransom and me... I mean, _God_. I've never met anyone more uptight and stubborn, honestly. And I went to _Andover._ ”

Holster called out to him and he pulled his arm away from Chris and skated off. Chris felt like banging his head against his goal post.

 _It’s your birthday, Chris, you can give yourself this much,_ he told himself as he approached Bitty after practice.

“Bitty… Can I talk to you? Uh… Maybe back at the Haus?”

“Of course. I don’t have a class just before lunch?”

“Me neither! Okay, that’s great. I’ll see you then.”

* * *

“Thank-you so much for this, Bitty,” he said as he walked into the Haus kitchen a couple of hours later.

“Of course, Chowder! Any time. What’s on your mind?”

“It’s about some of the other frogs. Well, specifically two of the other frogs.” Chris cringed. There were only the three of them in the first place, but he was so nervous about telling on his friends that his mouth was running away with him. “Well, specifically about Nursey and Dex, but don’t tell them that I talked to you.”

“Ooh, let me guess. You’re sick and tired of their sneering at one another?”

Chris winced. He had hoped it was only obvious to him, as their best friend, and not to the team as a whole. “Well, I don’t want to get them into trouble, but… Please don’t tell Jack.” He sighed, but Bitty smiled at him encouragingly, so he went on. “Well, they had those giveaways at the Princeton game that I had to save, because they were arguing. And _then,_ afterwards on the bus I couldn’t get any sleep and couldn’t do my homework, because they were arguing. And then Dex keeps telling me Nursey’s crazy and Nursey keeps telling me Dex is uptight.” Chris bit his lip. In case that was too much negative in one go, he added, “But Sunday was actually really nice because there were pancakes for brunch. But… They’re my best friends but I have no idea how to fix this. Can you talk to them? Please? And… Please, please, please, please, please don’t tell Jack.”

He held his breath so long that he thought he might pass out, until Bitty smiled at him. “Of course, Chowder. I’ll do my best.”

Chris left for his afternoon classes, feeling a little cheered that maybe even without his team knowing it was his birthday, he still might get granted a wish that his best friends would start to get along with each other.

* * *

They weren't there when Chris got to the dining hall that evening, but Bitty was so he went to put his tray next to him. “Bitty! Did you talk to them yet?” he asked, hoping the sophomore would know who he was talking about. “Are they friends yet?”

Bitty looked up at him sadly. “Chowder, sorry. They're different people. Not every pair of D-men can be like Ransom and Holster.”

Chris looked over at the older D-men, where they were digging into the same sundae over an Excel spreadsheet of what they needed to camp in the Haus garden.

“I suppose.”

“I'm sorry. I know they're your best friends. I just don't think they're the sort of people who can get on with each other and they've been forced to spend every moment together. Maybe after the holidays when they've had some time away from each other it will improve, or eventually they'll learn to live with each other, or next year when they are no longer roommates. For now, there's nothing we can do except make sure they don't bring it onto the ice. And that probably means letting them get it out of their systems off the ice.”

* * *

Bitty’s words still rang in his ears later on when they were back at the Haus. They were no comfort to him when he sat watching his best friends argue over something so stupid that he couldn't remember what it was.

“Guys, please, you can’t fight.”

His words went ignored, as the two continued to squabble.

“Please. Just not today?” His voice cracked. 

Dex’s head snapped towards him, eyes narrowed and his distraction was enough for Nursey to wrestle the book back from him. “What’s today?”

“Uh…” By now, Nursey was looking at him expectantly as well, and Chris couldn’t deny them an explanation. “My birthday.”

“Oh my God. Bitty’s going to flip that you didn’t let him fuss over your birthday.” Dex’s eyes had lit up like it was his own birthday come early.

“We better let him know sooner rather than later,” Nursey said, and for once Dex nodded in agreement. 

“No, guys, please, I didn't want a fuss and he'll be upset I didn’t tell him.”

“I’m telling him.”

Chris’s voice rose in panic. “No, no, no, Nursey, don't tell him.”

He turned to Dex, pulling out what Shelley had always referred to as his puppy dog eyes. He didn't really want to encourage the competitive rivalry between his two best friends, but he wanted Bitty to know he had kept his birthday quiet even less. One look was enough to bring Dex to his rescue. 

“Don't be an asshole if he doesn't want a fuss, Nurse.”

“Come on, Dex, would you really deny Bitty this?” 

Nursey stood and started towards the door, but as Dex tackled him to the ground and Chris saw Nursey's grin, he felt like he had misread the situation. Nursey was playing around, and had no actual intention of betraying Chris. What he was up for, though, was another round of roughhousing and Dex was all too willing to comply.

Chris squealed as he ended up in the middle of them, being wrestled and jostled about. They rolled on the floor, chirps falling on a blurry line between insulting and affectionate depending on who threw them towards whom. They didn't realize how much noise they were making until Bitty stormed in.

“What in the name of our Lord is going on here?” he demanded and all three of them stilled. Nursey turned back to Chris with a wicked grin, but didn’t open his mouth. 

“Don't tell him,” Chris hissed. Nursey’s eyes widened and Chris wasn’t sure why until Bitty spoke again with a raised eyebrow.

“Don't tell me what?”

None of them said anything. 

_“Christopher I don't know your middle name Chow.”_

“I don't really have one and actually my name is just Chris, not Christopher!”

“Chowder.”

Chris withered under Bitty’s glare. “Today's my birthday?”

Bitty gasped. “Oh, why didn't you _say?_ I would have made a cake! We don't have anywhere near enough icing sugar and Stop and Shop will already be closed. Oh my goodness gracious me.”

Chris looked down. Bitty was upset with him for not saying anything, he was sure of it. He couldn't look him in the eyes, and he couldn’t give any explanation for his silence.

“This is your fault,” Dex announced, turning on Nursey. 

“What the fuck. Chill, Poindexter, it's not—”

“He didn't say for a reason and you forced it. Birthdays can be sensitive for some people, you know?”

“For fuck’s sake, I _know_.”

“Oh, Chowder, honey did you not—” Bitty sounded so worried that Chris had to reassure him.

“I just didn't want anyone to make a fuss. I do like my birthday, honest. It's not that big a deal. I didn't want everyone to feel like they had to do something for it.”

“Still your fault,” Dex muttered to his d-partner. 

“Lay off it. I wasn't even actually going to say anything. I'm not kidding when I say I know birthdays can be a sensitive thing.” Dex snorted skeptically and Nursey snapped. “Go on, then. What's your issue with birthdays? My parents have _literally_ given each other presents on my birthday before and forgotten me. So don't try and preach to me about how they can be 'sensitive for some people'.”

“I don't—” Dex went bright red. “Fuck you,” he growled and stormed out, the Haus door slamming behind him.

There were thirty seconds of stunned silence then Nursey said, “I'm so sorry, Chowder,” and ran out after Dex.

Bitty sighed. “Come on, birthday boy, let's figure out some way I'm going to pamper you for the rest of the evening.”

“But… I'm his best friend. Shouldn't I—?”

“I really think he and Dex need some time to talk. They'll come back when they're ready. Come and sit in the kitchen for a bit while I bake you something.”

Chris could identify an attempt at distraction when he saw one and he wasn’t about to turn it down. “Pie?” he asked, hopefully. 

“Sure thing, sweetheart.”

* * *

About an hour later, Dex came back, full of apology, and surprising everyone there by hugging Chris. “I guess I can see why you didn’t want us to know when me and Nurse had to go and screw it up for you anyway. We talked. We’re going to try harder for you. You're our best friend, Chowder. Sorry I ruined your birthday.”

“You didn’t ruin it. Where’s Nursey?”

Dex grinned. “He’s getting your present. From both of us, but we figured you needed to hear an apology from each of us first, and we wanted to do those without the other one there.”

Sure enough, not long after, Nursey came in. He was empty-handed, but he whispered something to Dex before he sat down. Dex went outside.

“I’m sorry, C. I wasn’t going to tell anyone about your birthday if you didn’t want me to, but I also shouldn’t have made you think that I would, even as a joke. That was… not chill. And I’m sorry for making you tell us what you were keeping from us in the first place, and for making you need a reason why Dex and I shouldn’t fight. There shouldn’t have to be a reason for that. We don’t get on, but that shouldn’t affect the rest of the team, and it definitely shouldn’t affect you. And I’m sorry for running out, as well. Even though I’m a little less sorry for that because I think we worked things out a bit.”

“Nursey, I forgive you, of course I do, but what you said... About your parents?”

Nursey looked down at his feet. “Yeah, I’m sorry for saying that, too.”

“No! No, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry that you feel that way. We’ll make your birthday great, okay? When is it?”

Nursey went pink. “You don’t have to, C, really. But thanks. We should be celebrating yours now, anyway. _Hey, Poindexter!_ ”

Dex appeared again, now carrying a Target shopping bag. “Sorry it’s not wrapped up,” he said handing it across. Inside was a children’s shark dinnerware set. “And, uh, we couldn’t get official Sharks merchandise on such short notice. This was a stupid idea, Nurse, we can’t get him a plastic kids’ plate.”

“It was your idea.”

“It’s great!” Chris said quickly, before they could start arguing again. “Thank-you.”

There was a card, as well, which also had a shark on it, and written in Nursey’s cursive handwriting inside was, _‘Dear Chowder, Happy birthday, bro! We owe you one best friends’ trip to the New England Aquarium where we’ll get along and not fight at all. Keep it real. From Nursey and Dex.’_

* * *

They decided to go towards the end of the next week. They had to fit the trip around practices which were increasing in number as the season opener drew nearer and their differing class timetables, but Nursey had his car with him at Samwell and that meant they could get to Boston a little easier. It was a Thursday morning when none of them had class, and there was no morning practice. When Nursey and Dex had first suggested Chris stay in their dorm the night before so that they could get away quickly in the morning, he was uncertain, but it became difficult to turn down. They stayed up late, like it was a proper sleepover and Chris was struck with the realization that he had never done this with boys before. Though he had enjoyed sleepovers with his female friends when he was a child, his best friends had always been boys and sleepovers with them were never in the cards, so to have this now was brilliant. They ordered in pizza and watched a terrible action movie on Netflix, then Chris changed into his pajamas in the bathroom and objected weakly to Dex giving up his bed. He ended up sleeping in Dex’s bed anyway while Dex crashed on the couch.

The next morning, they piled into Nursey’s car with Chris getting automatic shotgun, but somehow Dex ended up driving. Nursey stretched out across the backseat, unconcerned by these arrangements. They picked up breakfast at Annie’s to eat on the way, and were pulling into a parking lot along the wharfside in Boston by nine o’clock.

When Chris reached for his wallet at the ticket desk, Nursey put out a hand to stop him. “I’ve got this. It’s your birthday, C. My treat.”

Chris glanced over at Dex. He just shrugged.

“It’s part of the deal. We’re not going to argue about the money. He can afford it, and we owe it to you to prove that we can spend time together outside of hockey without ripping each other’s throats out.”

It seemed to work well enough. Granted, Dex still rolled his eyes whenever Nursey pointed to a fish and called it Nemo, and Nursey was clearly trying not to scoff when Dex tried pronouncing the Latin names on the signs, but both avoided commenting.

At the shark and ray touch tank, Nursey ran his hand through the water, petting one of the sharks. Dex crouched next to him, deliberately avoiding the wet edge, but watching in fascination.

“Sharks are cool.”

“Yeah,” Nursey agreed, his voice one of wonder.

Chris looked at them both, thoughtfully. He had never seen them agree on something before, but he couldn’t help but feel he had to clarify something. “You guys know it’s the hockey team I like, and not the animal, right?”

Two identical expressions stared up at him, mouths slightly open. Nursey recovered first. “Well, yeah, of course, but we thought it was both? Because everything you have has sharks on it?”

“Because it’s mostly San Jose Sharks merchandise,” Chris said with a nod. “They put sharks on everything. It’s a cool logo. So then I end up with some other shark things because of the picture.”

Dex looked worried, now. “Do you hate them, in person?”

“What? No! They’re okay.” He shrugged. In reality, he had very few feelings about sharks, which always seemed to surprise people.

“But, uh, you wouldn’t have picked an aquarium for your birthday trip if it had been up to you?”

Chris shrugged again. “It’s something different. It’s been a good morning.” And it had. They had just been three friends hanging out, no need to chirp each other when there were strange-looking sea creatures to laugh over, and descriptions of marine life to read out. “It wasn’t a bad choice, honestly. I just thought I should check that you did actually know that the shark thing is just that I support the Sharks.”

Nursey dried his arm with some tissue and then threw it around Dex’s shoulders, the other hooking around Chris’s as he steered them towards the exit. “I’m glad it wasn’t a bad choice, because me and Dexy were patting ourselves on the back for being such geniuses for thinking of it.”

Dex pushed him away. “Bro, you stink of fish.”

Chris and Nursey both slowed their steps, glancing at each other in surprise. Dex turned when he realized he had almost left them behind. “What?”

“You just called Nursey ‘bro’,” Chris told him, a grin stretching on his face. “Oh my God, my best friends are finally going to be friends! This is the best.”

Dex’s lips tugged into half a smile. “I’m not ready to promise that, yet, C.”

* * *

As the month came to its end, along with their first game and Halloween, the team found themselves once more celebrating multiple religions at once; this time both because of Nursey.

“Diwali’s Hindu,” he explained to Chris and Dex, a week before Halloween. “The festival of lights. It’s a five day thing, so it starts today officially, but Diwali night is the middle one, and that’s the main bit of it. That’s when ma used to light sparklers with me. Islamic New Year is the same day this year. We never did as much for that. It’s not like with December the 31st, at least for my family. It’s cool for me when they're the same day because it's more of a celebration.”

“Brah, so like, do you have to do stuff today?” Shitty asked, leaning into the conversation.

Nursey shrugged. “First day of Diwali is preparation. Cleaning and shopping. I’m good.”

“Perfect! So can we talk Winter Screw?”

“What’s that?” Chris asked immediately.

“The winter dance. Tradition is that roommates set you up with your date, but—”

“Oh, god, _yes,_ I can set Poindexter up with someone.”

“Fuck.”

Chris looked between them in concern, then back at Shitty, who didn’t seem at all worried by what Chris was sure was a disaster in the making. “Alright, then. So we just have Chowder. Yo, Rans! Holster! Nursey and Dex are going to screw each other. We’ve just got Chowder.”

“We’re going to what now?” Dex said in a monotone, his face flushing the color of his jersey. Shitty just grinned at him.

“Hey, I already have an idea!” Nursey said. “One of my Andover friends. Goes to Yale, but keeps talking about coming to visit and has a total thing for awkward hockey players. Do you remember Natalie, Shits? She’d be so perfect for you, Dex.”

Shitty frowned like he was trying very hard to remember, and then just shrugged.

“Yale? Really Nurse?”

“Not in a pretentious way. She’s one of the few who gets away with it. She does experimental theater and makes her own clothes. Sick, right?”

“Wow!” Chris said. He wasn’t even sure what experimental theater was, but it sounded interesting.

“That entire sentence was frustrating.”

“I’ll have to write her straight away to be sure she gets it in time.”

“Write her?” Dex raised an eyebrow. “Text her.”

“She doesn’t have a phone.”

“Oh my God.”

“And she doesn’t check her e-mail on principle. She’s so into like… back to nature, and shit. Like with all your DIY stuff!”

Dex looked like he was fighting an internal battle for a moment. Chris knew that ever since his birthday, they had both been making more of an effort not to fight, or at least they had been when around teammates, but they still grated on each other. He had a sneaking suspicion, as well, that Nursey was deliberately goading him to see how far he could push Dex before he got a reaction. He remembered his sister trying the same thing with him when they were in middle school. Dex perhaps came to the same conclusion, because rather than arguing, he sighed. “Whatever, Nurse. I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

Nursey just grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With regard to the cws:  
> \- Dex calls Nursey 'crazy'  
> \- Nursey calls Dex 'uptight' and complains about his need for cleanliness  
> \- Nursey mentions that Dex said all lives matter, implication that it was in response to Black Lives Matter  
> ^all these are in the section where Chris talks to each of them during practice on his birthday
> 
> Nursey says that his parents forgot his birthday (when Bitty's just found out about Chris's birthday). Dex responds by getting angry.
> 
> Next up: Hazeapalooza! (including the first scene I ever wrote for this fic so that's exciting)


	5. Hazeapalooza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hazing passes in a bit of a haze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings:  
> Drinking to the point of black-out occurs.  
> For info RE coming out and other trans issues in this chapter, see end notes (contains spoilers) (please feel free to skip this chapter completely if coming out is a sensitive topic)  
> Also, (brief) discussions of racism, and marginalisation, as well as mental health.

Chris frowned at the door to his room. It was late at night, a Monday, and Chris wanted to sleep so that he was alert for practice the next day, even if he still had homework to finish. He had only gone to brush his teeth, so hadn't bothered to lock the door behind him, but normally that didn't matter. Nobody would go in his room just in the time it took to brush his teeth, after all. Apparently he had been wrong to think so, because now there were voices coming from behind his door, and as he drew nearer he could make out the soft French-Canadian accent of his captain and the Southern twang of Eric Bittle as they argued about— Chris frowned some more and shuffled forward. They were definitely arguing about pie. Chris pushed the door open and looked cautiously in at them.

“Hi Bitty! Is everything alright?”

Both of his teammates spun to face him with looks as if they had been caught with their hands in a cookie jar. Bitty was holding one of Chris’s pillows and Jack’s hair looked a little rumpled, as if he may have just been hit with it.

“Aw, Chowder, your jammies are so cute!”

Chris looked down at his black and teal pajamas. “Thanks, Bitty! They're from the Sharks shop!”

Jack let out a sigh and muttered something Chris couldn't hear. Bitty, however, clearly did catch his words as he threw him a dirty look before taking a black sack out of his pocket. “Chowder, honey, I need you to put this over your head.”

“What? Why?”

“I can't tell you why.”

Chris stammered and tried to push for an explanation, until he was sure his friend was about to crumble, but all of a sudden Jack had taken the bag from Bitty’s hands and Chris's world was plunged into darkness. Chris squealed, and heard Bitty raise his own complaints as well. The words “Jack Laurent Zimmermann,” were punctuated with soft thunks which suggested Chris’s pillow might not last the evening.

“It's just not fair. I hated this bit last year,” Bitty said, once they had all calmed down. 

Chris tried not to focus on his words; only on not tripping over his own feet as he walked blindly out of the dorm building, urged on by Jack’s hand on his back. “Is this hazing?” he asked.

“Yes, Chowder.”

Jack groaned. “We’re not supposed to talk to him, Bittle.”

“Shush, you.”

Finally, they were all at Faber, being encouraged to drink shot after shot of liquor. They had already had beer just before Dex had disappeared to the library and Nursey and Chris to their dorms, so now Chris could feel the alcohol coursing through him. There was alcohol, and skating, and alcohol, and howling, and then some more alcohol. At some point Jack got demoted to frog-status for reasons Chris missed between a beer and another shot.

The evening started to break up into flashes and he couldn't remember how they ended up kneeling on the ice in just their underwear, hands tied with stick tape. Chris had a vague feeling that something about this was a bad idea, but then Shitty was talking and the next thing Chris was aware of was them all moving to go back to the Haus. Shitty stood in front of him, with one of the sweaters he had told Bitty not to bring and was saying quietly, “It's okay, brah. Got your back,” and he pulled the tape off Chris's wrists so that he could get the sweater on. Chris was grateful. It had been cold without anything on. Then, he was blindfolded again and Chris was being led down the now familiar path to the Haus.

A body jostled against him and Dex's voice apologised.

“Oh, sorry, Dex! But I can't see you.”

“Me neither.” Dex sounded amused. “Are you wearing a sweater?”

Chris hummed in acknowledgement. 

“No talking!” Shitty called back to them.

“For real, why does Chowder get a sweater?”

“It's kind of itchy!” Chris said, hoping it would make Dex feel better.  Maybe there hadn't been enough to go around and they had decided the California kid needed one more than the one from Maine. Shitty told them to shut up again, but at that moment there was a loud cry and a thump and Chris was jerked to a stop.

“Okay, frogs, you're having your blindfolds taken off because  _ someone  _ can't walk.”

Chris blinked in sudden light until his eyes adjusted to the scene of Ollie and Wicks with an arm under each of Nursey’s, pulling him to his feet.

“Swawesome,” Lardo said. “I get a piggyback in that case.”

She jumped on Chris's back and by some miracle, he only stumbled a little before he regained his balance and they started walking again.

“I’m really sorry about earlier, dude,” she whispered in his ear as they went.

“What?”

“Like, I knew and I wasn’t even thinking when they got you all stripping. I was meant to have your back, and I failed. So I’m sorry.”

Chris squeezed his eyes closed. The alcohol was blurring his mind and he still had no idea what she was talking about.

* * *

When Chris woke up the next morning, he couldn't piece together any more of Hazeapalooza, and he was struggling to separate the actual drunken memories from the bizarre alcohol-induced dream he had had after finally falling asleep. There were feathers on his bed, and his pillow was a little lumpy, but it hadn’t, at least, ripped. The end of a feather was sticking through the pillowcase and he absently pushed it back in until there was just a minuscule point which would no doubt irritate the life out of him the next night. A knock at the door made him aware of how much his head hurt.

He was surprised to find Shitty on the other side. Shitty had never been to his dorm before.

“Hi, Shitty!” he said as enthusiastically as his pounding head and queasy stomach would allow. However, when he recognized the same cautious look in the senior’s eye as had been there the night before, Chris remembered. Taking his pajamas off. Bitty’s sweaters, that they weren't allowed to wear. Then Shitty’s quiet words, a shake in his voice that betrayed a worry that he might have made a mistake as he made Chris an exception to that particular rule. Finally, the major detail that Chris’s alcohol-muddled mind had been reaching for but never quite recalling all evening: the scars which were the reason he usually avoided showing his bared chest to his team.

“Oh god. Does everyone know? Do you want to kick me off the team?”

Shitty blanched. “Brah. Fuck, no. Never. Nursey was the only one who actually noticed, I think. He came to me and Lardo and said he thought you should get a sweater and I was all ready to say no but she said, shit yeah you should and then… seriously, dude. Just the three of us, and Lards said you told her already? Nobody else saw, far as I can tell. We're not going to tell anyone. I just thought maybe… do you want to talk? I meant what I said last night. I've got your back. We all do.”

“I'm trans,” the words came out thick. Chris hated coming out to people. He hated putting a label on his gender that wasn't just ‘male’. “It's been nearly a year now since the surgery. You really won't tell anyone? I don't want it to change anything.”

Shitty smiled and rested a hand on Chris's shoulder. “It changes nothing. Thank-you for trusting me, and I’m sorry it was because I found out before you were ready to tell me. Anyway, I'm here to let you know that practice is cancelled for today and we're having team breakfast at the Haus instead. You coming?”

Chris started to nod, but paused. “I'm going to go and talk to Nursey first. Thanks, Shitty.”

* * *

“Dex isn't here?”

Nursey pulled a face. “He was up and gone before I woke up. He's mad at me, I think.”

“Why?”

Nursey shrugged. “Who cares?”

Chris had a feeling that Nursey cared very much, but he didn't say anything. He sat nervously on the sofa and waited for Nursey to finish pouring their coffees.

“You look like this is an interview or something, C, chill.”

“You saw… last night. You saw my…”

“Oh.” Nursey chewed on his lip. “It’s chill. I wasn't going to— if you'd not wanted to say anything I would have pretended I never saw. And I don't want to make any assumptions about it.”

“Mastectomy scars.”

Nursey nodded like he wasn’t surprised. “And you're—”

“Trans. Male. Yeah. You're okay with it?”

“My mom’s trans.” Nursey blurted the words out like he still wasn't used to telling people. “She came out to me and my sister about two years ago. Ma already knew. I think she knew a while, but they didn’t really go over that. They, um… this is awful.”

“Wait, what is? Is she okay with you telling me?”

“Yeah,” Nursey breathed. “I don’t mean that. She’s definitely okay with me telling you, but  _ I’ve  _ been awful. Your birthday… Shit. I mean, I said that my parents forgot my birthday once. But they  _ didn’t.  _ I just said that to— I mean, that was just before she came out to me, and I was at Andover anyway. My parents started talking to the doctor around then about mom starting to transition, and that's why they told Leila and me, over Spring Break. We celebrate everyone's birthday's together whenever we can because we're never together in the semester, and that was the year of my sixteenth, so they got me my car in the summer. They were never going to get me anything on my actual birthday but it wasn’t a case of them forgetting, you know? That was a shitty birthday for me for other reasons. Ones I probably wouldn’t tell Dex about. I was—” He took a breath.

Chris frowned. He recognised when someone was about to say something huge. He wasn't sure if he could handle any more huge at this time of the morning, especially if Nursey didn't really want to tell him. “Nursey, don’t—”

“No, you deserve to know. Someone at Samwell should. I was being diagnosed with bipolar. So that’s why it was a bad birthday, but on the surface it was always easier to blame my parents. That's what I did when my dorm buddies there noticed me being down, I told them that my parents hadn't sent anything for my birthday. They knew that was true. They didn't know that's nothing to do with why I wasn't okay. My parents are great. They’d do anything for me, and my mom—” He looked a mixture between guilty and relieved. “I've never told anyone else because Andover— you don't talk about that sort of thing, you know? You can, if you fit into one of their boxes, but me— There was no way that I could talk about the fact that the person they all knew as my father was actually my mom. She doesn't really pass as a woman, so if people don't know, they misgender her, so I just stopped talking about home so that I didn't have to feel guilty about what pronouns I might end up using for her.”

Chris pulled a face and looked into his lap. Being misgendered had a certain sting to it that he preferred not to think about. Even so, there was something morbidly reassuring about knowing other people went through the same struggles. “Thanks for telling me.”

Nursey smiled and bumped their shoulders together. “Thank  _ you  _ for telling  _ me. _ I'm really glad you get to be you.”

“Thanks. Are you better now?”

“Huh?” Nursey blinked twice before he caught up with Chris’s line of thought. “Oh, well, I don’t think bipolar’s the sort of thing you can get better from, you know? My brain’s always going to be wired that way, but I have medication for it, and I’m better at handling it.”

“If you ever need anything—”

“Thanks, C. You’re a great friend.”

Chris was sure his smile looked a little stupid, but he knocked Nursey’s shoulder back. “So are you. Thanks for last night, too. Getting me the sweater. I didn’t even—”

“Bro, you were  _ so  _ out of it. It's actually kind of impressive. You weren't slurring your words and you were still blocking our shots and yet you were _so_ drunk.”

Chris laughed, and took the chirps as they got up to go to the Haus. It was good to know that Shitty’s promise of nothing changing was definitely true.

* * *

Lardo pulled Chris to the side as soon as they got there, dragging him up the stairs to Shitty’s room with some offhand comment, over her shoulder, about how she needed ‘cultural advice’ on an art project.

“I don’t know if I can help you. I’ve never been very good at art, and besides I'm American,” Chris told her when the door had closed. “Well, my dad was born in Hong Kong, but—”

“Chowder. I wanted to say sorry for last night. I think you were too drunk to really hear it when I said it before.”

“Oh. It’s okay.”

“It’s not. I was supposed to have your back.”

“You did have my back, okay? I was the one who got so drunk that I didn’t even realize that my scars were on full display to a group of people I’m not out to. It wasn’t your job to stop that happening. When you did realize, you had my back. That’s what matters. I’m an adult, and I don’t expect you to babysit me. These things happen.”

She looked down at the floor, and Chris couldn’t tell if she was convinced or not, so he sighed and added, “I’m not  _ not  _ out because I don’t want to be out. I’m not out because I hate having that conversation with people, and I love this team and I don’t want it to change anything. Shitty and Nursey have already promised me that it won’t with them. It was fine with you before, but if you’re going to start tip-toeing around me and trying to police my actions to stop me being stupid when I’m drunk—”

“No!” Lardo snapped her head to look at him. “Chowder. No. That’s not what this is. I’m sorry. That’s all. It won’t change anything with the team, and if you want someone else to talk to them so that you don't have to be the one to have that conversation with them, I’m here for you, bro. But it’s your shout.”

“Thanks. But… I’m not so sure yet. There’s a lot of white bros, you know?”

She snorted. “Yeah. There are. Okay, dude. As long as you’re okay.”

He smiled and nodded, then held an arm out for a hug. “Can you— Can you get Bitty to come up here for a bit?” he asked when they had let go of each other. She nodded once and disappeared down the stairs while Chris went to wait outside Bitty’s bedroom.

“Chowder? Are you okay?”

He smiled up at his teammate. “Hi, Bitty. I just wanted to talk a moment. And I brought you your sweater back.”

“Oh! Well, why don't you come on in, then.”

Chris followed Bitty into his room and sat on the desk chair. Bitty smiled expectantly at him.

“Um, well a while ago you came out to me and you said that I could talk to you about those things anytime, but I didn't— I mean, well, I should have just told you then? But I'm really bad at this so I didn't but then last night— Well, anyway, not everyone knows but a few people on the team do now and basically I'm trans. Nursey and Shitty both saw my scars last night, from my mastectomy and Lardo knows as well and—” He let out a long sigh between where his teeth dug into his lower lip.

“Oh, honey.” Bitty was still smiling but there was the hint of a frown forming on his face. “Thank you for telling me and for trusting me, but you know you're not  _ obligated  _ to tell anyone, don't you? Not because I came out to you, or because some other people know or anything. You're a great friend and that stands whether I know that you're trans or not. I'm glad that— I mean, I sort of thought you were non-binary after all that gender talk with Nursey and Dex, so I was worried that maybe we were all using pronouns you weren't totally comfortable with but you never owe it to anyone to come out.”

Chris concentrated on breathing for a moment because while he knew that, he also knew that a lot of the times he had come out to people it had been a case of him feeling guilty that they didn't know, more than a desire for them to know, especially in more recent times since he passed as male. “I know. I don't necessarily want to hide it though? I just want people to see me as male in my own right?”

“Chowder.  _ Chris. _ You  _ are.” _

The words brought tears to his eyes, something which he put down to the amount of alcohol he had consumed the night before, and Bitty gathered him into a hug, gently stroking his hair.

"Yeah," he breathed. "Yeah, I am." 

“Now come on, we better go and see if those animals have left us any food.”

Chris smiled weakly in response and let Bitty brush away the tears then drag him downstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **On coming out as trans in this chapter**  
>  Chris gets so drunk that he loses cognitive function and blacks out. He forgets that he usually hides the scars on his chest and lets the team talk him into stripping. One character notices and discretely tells another character to let Chris wear a sweater. These events mean that Chris is outed to two characters. When he realizes what has happened, he talks to them both individually, comes out explicitly, and they reassure him that they have his back. Lardo apologizes for letting it happen, when she had already known he was trans, and Chris tells her that it was his own actions that caused it, and not her job to stop it. He then chooses to come out to another character whom he trusts, who makes sure to remind him that he isn't obliged to come out to anybody he doesn't want to. All the characters are supportive. Also, a character talks (with permission) about a family member who is trans, and her struggles with being misgendered.
> 
> On other issues:  
> \- Nursey talks about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder (and admits to shifting the blame for the difficult time he had at that time onto his parents unfairly)  
> \- He also talks about how he _couldn't_ talk about these sorts of things at Andover, as a marginalized individual. (side note that this section was a lot longer to begin with. It was the first bit I wrote of the whole fic and when I was editing it felt like Nursey was talking more than he would for this hangover conversation. His 'fitting into boxes' comment is a shortening of something he was going to say before which is basically the sentiment that he didn't fit in there because he was 'American, but not white. Not fully Black, not fully Indian; not completely Muslim, not completely Hindu. Not straight, and not gay. Decent grades, but not top of the class. Good at Hockey, but was never going to be given the C even though I'm the only one who's come on to play NCAA.'  
>  Anyway that felt heavy for the state of Chris's hangover and I don't think him and Chris having another explicit conversation about it will make it anywhere else into this fic so here have some free angsty Nursey introspection


	6. First Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First Game, Halloween post-game party, and family weekend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took a bit longer and it still ended up a bit of a filler chapter? Because I don't know enough about hockey to write out the game properly despite watching some as research.

They only had a couple of days to recover before their first game. The morning of the 31st, Chris felt more nervous than he had over a hockey game in a long time. Even so, he found it easy to slip into his pre-game rituals. He had a good breakfast, and then spent his morning Mandarin class imagining random objects around the room were pucks about to be hit towards his goal and doing his best to twist into position to stop them under the desk without it being too obvious to anybody else that he wasn’t paying attention to the grammar lesson.

He arrived to the midday skate just after eleven thirty so that he could get some ice time before everyone else showed up. He had only done one lap of the rink, and a circle around the goalposts, however, before Jack appeared from the direction of the locker rooms. Unlike Chris, he wasn’t wearing his full gear: just a training shirt, sweats and a few pads.

Jack did a couple of circuits of the rink, while Chris practised moving from side to side within his goal. Finally, he circled back around to watch.

“Nice edges,” he commented. Chris looked up in surprise. Compliments from Jack were a rarity.

“Thanks. Want to give me something to block?”

Jack grinned, and immediately skated away to get some pucks.

The rest of the team filtered in noisily and started to join in on the shoot-out practise until the coaches came in, along with the stragglers, and organized drills.

* * *

Afterwards, the majority of them headed over to Jerry’s for lunch, though a few had classes to go to, something Holster complained about loudly. Chris, for his part, was keeping quiet and trying to stop himself from slipping out of his zone. The main thing now was to eat well and then have a nap so that he was fully refreshed by the game. So, he paid little attention to Dex and Nursey’s negotiations of what the first one of them to get a point will get, and ignored Holster’s rendition of Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, as he sung it to Shitty in place of Ransom. He didn’t even contribute to the list Ollie and Wicks were drawing up of the weirdest Halloween costumes they had all seen so far that day. In fact, he noticed none of this, until Wagner was shouting down the table,

“Yo, Jack, any news on the scouts?”

Chris’s head snapped up at this, curiously watching as Jack shrugged. “I know a couple will be there.”

“Wait, there are going to be NHL scouts there? At our game?” Chris asked.

Holster gave him a funny look. “Yeah, bro. For Jack.”

“Oh my God,” Dex said, and Chris was glad to not be the only one who hadn’t realized that might be the case.

“The NHL are going to watch our game. Oh my God.”

“It’s fine,” Jack tried to reassure them. “They’re not going to be judging your performance against NHL standards. Really, the ones I know about tonight are just there because my dad’s coming down for family weekend. They’re more here to hang out with him than to watch us.”

This didn’t have the calming effect that Jack had probably expected.

“Bab Bob is going to watch us play?”

The three frogs exchanged panicked looks. The thought of the customized jersey in Chris’s wardrobe burned in his mind. Of course they had known that it was family weekend as well - Nursey’s parents were coming even though nobody else of the frogs’ family had been able to make it - but the realization that a former professional player counted as someone who might show up for family weekend hadn’t even connected whilst they were planning their Halloween outfits.

“Chill,” Nursey said after a moment of silence. Chris suspected he was talking to himself as much as the other two of them. Dex bristled and Holster quickly leaned in to intervene.

“Yeah, chill-time, definitely. We’re all going back to the Haus to nap. Any of you want to hang out there?”

Dex and Nursey both shook their heads, but Chris nodded. At school, he and a few friends on the hockey team had always camped out in the trainer's room before a match, and he wasn't convinced that he would wake up if he slept in his single room.

* * *

Chris jolted awake with someone slapping him. He sat up, wide-eyed and alarmed, to see Ransom and Holster stood next to him.

“No, look, you woke him up!” Bitty exclaimed.

“Bro, I can’t believe you fell asleep on the couch,” Holster said, shaking his head.

“Dude, the last time I slept on that couch I got a rash,” Ransom agreed.

There was a tingle down Chris’s spine. “Oh no. I feel itchy.” He wasn’t sure how much of it was suggestibility, but he had the sudden urge to scratch.

Bitty swiped at Ransom with his oven mitts. “It’s a horrible couch but you did  _ not  _ get a rash, Justin Oluransi, you leave him alone.”

“Let’s go, everyo- What’s up with Chowder?”

“I slept on the couch and now I’ve got a rash!”

Jack frowned. “I know you slept on the couch, you said you were going to-”

“You  _ knew?!”  _ Bitty exclaimed, sounding outraged.

“He said he was going to nap at the Haus. Where else would he have slept?”

Chris watched as the others exchanged looks which suggested that this hadn’t occurred to them earlier. “Er… guys?” he asked cautiously as they started to bicker. “What if I can’t play?”

“You can play, Chowder, it’s fine,” Jack told him reassuringly. “Now, everyone out. We have to go.”

“But I’m all itchy on my neck,” Chris insisted as Jack all but shoved Holster through the front door. Jack stared at him intensely until Chris stumbled back a little.

“I don’t see a rash.”

“Okay! Okay, that’s good, I just-”

“You’re fine. Come on.”

Chris ran to get out of the Haus so that Jack could lock it up.

* * *

After some words of encouragement from Lardo, and a warm-up game of soccer coordinated by Shitty (and cut short by Jack when Ransom took the ball to his face), Chris finally pulled his gear back on, and was stepping onto the ice.

During games, time always seemed to work differently. There were moments of intense speed: the puck passing from player to player like a bullet; Dex spinning away from an attempted check; sticks clashing in the battle for possession; Jack slamming the puck into the opposite goal. Then, there were the times everything was slow-motion: Nursey being pushed into the boards; the puck floating towards Chris and bouncing off his pads; sipping at a carton of orange juice in between periods while the coaches went over plays; Holster wrestling a player until Bitty could swipe the puck out from between them; once again the puck coming towards Chris, this time slipping its way through a gap just under his arm. It clipped him, and he remembered why they wore so many pads; why they said that goalies had to be a little strange to put themselves in the line of fire.

He had learned long ago not to keep count of the goals, because it would only mess with his head, so he had to check the scoreboard when the clock reached zero. 3-1. He could let himself be pulled into celebration.

The buzz of a locker room after a win was the sort of high Chris lived for. Everybody joking and laughing as they changed, and there was even some squealing from the showers when Shitty and Holster tried to force a celly on Ransom mid-wash. Chris took his time sitting and watching the atmosphere bubble, and made sure that he was the last to finish taking his kit off and wandering over to the now-empty showers. He had still expected the team to all be there when he came out, the same way that they had hung around until everybody was ready to go after their pre-season games. This time, however, only about half of them remained. Chris frowned and looked over to Dex as they put their things together.

“Where’s Nursey gone?”

“Hmm? Oh, he’s gone to find his parents and make arrangements for tomorrow.”

Of course. Chris had forgotten, again, that it was family weekend, and so a number of the team were with those who had come to visit them. “Your parents couldn’t get here?” he asked, glancing at Will who went a little pink.

“Oh, uh, no. It’s not very easy for them to get here.”

Chris didn’t push, because for Dex it was usually a question of money, and that was a sensitive topic. “Same here. Massachusetts is a bit far for just a weekend.”

Dex smiled. “Yeah, it is. When we used to go to California, we’d go for two or three weeks to make it worth it.”

“You’ve been?” Chris wished he couldn’t hear the surprise in his own voice, but he had to admit that Dex was probably the last person he expected to have gone to the West coast.

“Oh, uh, yeah, my cousin lives in LA. When we were little, we went down to see them any time my parents could get the time off work during school vacations, but we haven’t been able to go in years now.”

“Wow, that’s ‘swawesome. You should come and stay with me next summer and see San Francisco. Oh! Or over winter break. I have a Sharks season ticket, so we could go to some of the games. They’re going to be playing at the Staples Center, so we could even go and see your family there if you wanted!”

Dex blinked in surprise. “Oh, uh, I don’t know. I probably should go home over winter break. Thanks, though.”

Chris deflated slightly. It made sense that Dex wouldn’t want to cross the country when he could go home, but it also would have been nice to have a friend over. “Maybe next time?”

Dex knocked his shoulder gently. “Maybe.”

* * *

Chris went back to his room to get changed, then to Nursey and Dex’s suite so that they could go together. The door was opened by the boxer who also lived there dressed as a zombie. “Oh, wow, you’re huge,” Chris said, then blushed red. “I mean. Shit, you look great, but-”

“They’re in their room,” she said with a roll of the eyes. Chris hurried past.

“I’m just saying, Maine is closer to Canada,” Nursey was saying as he walked in.

“New York borders Canada too, you idiot.”

“But I live in the South of the state, and it’s closer to Pennsylvania than Maine is!”

Chris looked between them. Dex had used the temporary black hair dye they had got him, but otherwise neither of them were ready. “You two haven’t decided which jersey you’re wearing yet, have you?”

When they turned to look at him, both of them frowned. “Er… Chowder…” Nursey said slowly, with a glance to Dex for help.

“You know Bad Bob never played for the Sharks, right?” Dex finished.

“I didn’t want to wear a different team, and the Canadiens and the Penguins are the important ones, and you two said you had them covered.”

He turned so that they could see that he had ordered the shirt personalized with the name Zimmermann on it, and the number 11. “So anyway, I think Nursey’s right, if you’re going with Geography, that he gets Penguins and Dex gets the Canadiens, but if that doesn’t work you could just flip a coin for it?”

* * *

“Did we forget to tell you that you weren’t allowed to come as hockey players?” Holster asked when they finally got to the Haus. He and Ransom were dressed as Forrest Gump and Bubba.

“We’re not just hockey players,” Nursey told them, and all three of them turned to show the name on their backs.

“Ah, I see.” Shitty had come up to see them, now. “So we have very freckly, and looking a bit strange with black hair Canadiens legend, Bad Bob.” He pointed at Dex, who rolled his eyes. “And we have suddenly biracial former Penguins captain, Bad Bob.” He pointed at Nursey. “And finally we have Chowder’s wet dream of Jack signing with the Sharks next year.”

“No!” Chris objected, but the sounds of his teammates laughing drowned him out as he told them, “No, I’m Bad Bob, too.”

“Now get in here. Jack! There you are. Jack’s a cat. Jack, Chowder’s you.”

“No, I’m- I’m your… dad…” Chris turned to Nursey to back him up, but his friend was laughing too hard.

“You’re both going to do a kegstand tonight. Fucking beaut of a game.” Shitty held up his drink in a toast to them and disappeared into the crowd.

“So, my dad?” Jack asked with a smirk.

“Uh, yeah, we all… I mean Dex and Nursey have as well. We managed to get his Penguins and Habs jerseys and then, well...”

“There was a third person and you needed a third team?”

“Oh my.”

Chris turned to look at the person who had joined them. They had red curly hair pulled up into a bun, and a black dress with an apron. They were carrying a plate of pies, but Chris didn’t recognise them. “Hi, I’m Chris! I mean… Bad Bob.”

Jack snorted.

“Chowder.” The newcomer said, and Chris frowned. They just laughed. “Would you like a meat pie?”

When he said that, the accent was too distinctive to miss. “Oh my God! Bitty! Wow, you look- Who are you?”

“Mrs Lovett.” When Chris just shrugged, Bitty elaborated, “She’s a character in Sweeney Todd. She bakes pies.”

“Out of people,” Jack added. He then nodded towards Bitty’s phone. “You look like you want to take a picture with me.”

Bitty almost dropped the tray, but recovered just in time. “Well, I sure gotta get proof that you dressed up, don’t I, Mr Zimmermann? Mr Zimmermann Junior, that is,” he said with a wink to Chris.

“Uh, I’m just gonna go get a drink,” Chris excused himself.

Nursey grinned when he rejoined the other frogs at the drinks table. “How’s it going?”

“Do you think Jack and Bitty like each other?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Dex asked.

Chris opened his mouth to say that he hadn’t meant it in that way, but Nursey had already passed him a beer and was walking to the living room with his own solo cup of what looked like cola, probably with a generous dash of rum. “I don’t know about drinking loads tonight,” he said instead. “We’ve got games all weekend.”

“Yeah,” Nursey agreed, even as he tipped back a mouthful of his drink.

It wasn’t too difficult, for once, for Chris to stick to his one beer, and the kegstand Shitty persuaded him into doing. Perhaps because of their weekend of games, there wasn’t any tub juice, and nobody was particularly pressuring anybody else to always have a drink in hand. In fact, when the frogs left for the dorms, Chris was easily the merriest of them.

* * *

The next day, their game was mid-afternoon, and so routines were already a little skewed before family weekend was taken into consideration. There was no morning skate, and instead they slept a little later in the morning, and then Chris met up with Nursey and Dex and they walked, chirping Dex for the fading black streaks in his hair, to the restaurant Nursey's parents had booked for lunch. 

"What are your favorite classes?" Nursey's ma, Anika, asked, almost as soon as they had sat down. Where his mom had shaken both their hands, she had stayed back in the way Chris had seen his own father do. It was, he assumed, a consequence of growing up with Eastern customs. Her Indian accent was stronger than he had been expecting, given that Nursey had always been more likely to talk as a part of the Black community. Then again, maybe that was just a result of teammates like Ransom and Jell-O. Perhaps in light of Chris's own experience of culture, it made sense that Nursey identified more with the one of the parent who had spent her whole life living in America, as opposed to the one who had only been there a couple of years before she started having children. 

"Uh, computer science," Dex replied, and Chris nodded. 

"Yeah, we're taking that together, and it's really good. We tried to get Nurse-uh- Derek to take it too, but he didn't want to. I'm taking beginner's Mandarin too and that's fun! I think I'm going to keep up with it next semester. My grandparents all speak Cantonese, but Samwell don't offer Cantonese, so this was the closest I could- I don't know." 

"That makes sense," Xo Nurse nodded. "I was born in America, but my parents still spoke Somali at home and I went to Islamic school to learn Arabic, so I wanted Luula and Diri to have the same. I think it's very important that children understand a bit about the culture they come from, especially when it's potentially a complicated one, so it's good that you're trying to connect to that." 

"Luula and Diri?" Dex asked in confusion. 

Nursey smiled. "Yeah, they deliberately gave us names that wouldn't sound too out of place in America and then proceeded to call us by completely different names in their own languages." 

"Stop sassing your mother," Anika scolded him. 

The rest of the meal was spent with Chris being told not to call either of them Mrs Nurse, because he was making everything too confusing, while Dex stared at his pasta a lot, looking completely overwhelmed and a little guilty that they had paid for him. Later, outside Faber, Bitty interrogated Nursey’s ma about vegan cooking, and Nursey’s mom demanded of Ransom which hairdressers he went to nearby  ‘because Derek clearly hasn’t bothered since he got here’. The frogs were flustered by chirps from Bob Zimmermann, and Alicia had just started to tell her husband off for making them uncomfortable when Jack piped up that they should probably go inside now.

“Are you okay?”

Chris turned to Nursey, already opening his mouth to reply when he saw that it was Dex he was leaning towards, and who was nodding back.

“It’s a lot, but- Yeah. Two moms, huh? You managed to keep that quiet.”

“Nah, bro, you just don’t listen properly.”

Chris watched quietly as Dex looked over his shoulder at the two women. He wondered what exactly his friend saw. Nursey had been right when he said that his mom didn’t pass traditionally as a woman. She wore a women’s pant suit and a hijab, but her features were distinctly masculine, and her stubble, like Nursey’s, was enough to give Chris a twang of envy, which he hastily suppressed. He had little doubt that this was why Dex was feeling overwhelmed, and yet he was impressed to realize that he hadn’t once heard Mrs Nurse being misgendered. Before he could think on it further, Shitty was drop-kicking a soccer ball to Wicks and Chris settled into game-mode again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It will probably be a while again until the next one because I'm thinking of doing [Nursey week](https://nurseyweek.tumblr.com/) and at the moment all the ficlets I've written for it are gonna be set as like companions to this one (in fact, first up: Hazeapalooza from Nursey's POV), so you will get bits and pieces, but just not on this particular fic, because I won't have a lot of time to write chapter 7, which isn't even really in draft stages yet.


	7. Superstitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris attempts to keep the peace across the team, and struggles with being so far from home. Meanwhile, when Dex mentions he doesn't have any superstitions, Chris and Nursey set out to prove him wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a busy couple of weeks, so thank-you to everyone for being patient with me!
> 
> Some past experiences of transphobia are mentioned in this chapter, as well as some awkward comments about genitalia. (all in the section about looking for a Screw date)

Between seeing others on his team with their family and packing for their roadie the next week, it hit home to Chris that he had been away from his parents for much longer than ever before, now. He missed the California sun and his dad's cooking and having seafood at least three times a week. He missed being able to make plans at school to go to a Sharks game in a couple of weeks because he and all his friends had season passes. He forced a smile on his face as he sat down to dinner, but he couldn’t bring himself to be as enthusiastic about chicken tenders as the rest of the team. Dex quirked an eyebrow at him, and Chris wondered if that meant he should try harder to act upbeat but before either of them could say anything Nursey was sliding in next to them with a casual, “Yo.”

“Nursey!” Chris blinked at Dex's tone. He had never sounded so happy to see his d-partner before. “Congratulations.”

There was a pause. “What for?” Nursey asked slowly.

“You managed to walk all the way over here without dropping your food on anyone.”

Almost immediately, other members of the team leaned in to join the chirping which had now been going on for two days, ever since Nursey dropped pasta over someone Ransom recognized from a lot of his classes. Nursey’s only reaction before he dropped his attention to his sweet potato was a roll of the eyes. Chris nudged his ankle with his foot and got a soft smile in response, so he hoped that meant Nursey wasn’t upset by the teasing.

“You’re being quiet,” Nursey told Chris twenty minutes later when they were on their way out of the dining hall.

Chris shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Chowder…” Dex had come up on his other side, now, and was frowning in concern.

“I was thinking about home, is all.”

Nursey hummed. “You didn’t board at high school, did you?”

“No?”

“I thought you went to school in San Jose,” Dex said.

“Uh, yeah, but it’s less than an hour’s drive.”

Nursey and Dex both stared at him.

“What’s your point?” he asked quickly.

“Homesickness,” Nursey replied. “You get used to it. Well, you don’t, but it gets easier to manage. It’s worse if you spend a lot of time thinking about home. There was this one girl at Andover. She had been fine, but then she rang her mom and afterwards was crying her eyes out because she missed her so much and hearing her voice made her realize it. She transferred to somewhere closer to home about two weeks later. You don’t need things to be like they are at home. We just have to make our own home here. Okay?”

“Such a sap,” muttered Dex, but he grabbed Chris’s elbow and started pulling him. “I’ll show you what always helps me.”

“With homesickness?” Chris asked, surprise coloring his voice. He would have imagined Dex would have even less experience with dealing with such things than he did.

“Yeah. Uh. This might be the first time I’ve lived away from home, but we moved around a lot so I’m used to having to make a new home in a different place, and missing people, too. Uh, friends and stuff, you know?” The way he avoided Chris’s eye made him wonder if Dex was hiding something in that explanation, but Chris didn’t like to ask, especially with Nursey hanging onto his other arm.

They reached Lake Quad and Dex made a beeline for a tree, swung himself up onto one of the branches and looked down at them.

“Afraid to get your clothes dirty, Nurse?”

“What? No, chill, of course not. I just—” Nursey bit his lip. “No.” He stared at the tree for a moment, and Chris had the startling realization that he had no idea how to go about climbing it. Chris nudged him out the way and pointedly put his hands on one branch, and his foot against a knob on the trunk, and pulled himself up so that Nursey could follow.

When they were all sat on a couple of the stronger branches, Nursey holding on so tightly his knuckles had gone white, Chris looked out over at the pond. “This helps?”

“Uh, yeah. Maybe it's the sort of thing that's a bit personal. Every time we moved, the first thing my brother and I would do to check out the area was go for a walk and climb some trees and see if we got yelled at for it. If we didn't it would be an okay place to live.” He peeled a bit of bark off and shredded it between his fingers.

“What if you did?”

Dex sighed. “We normally tried to find a way to get us to move again, but sometimes it's possible to find other ways to make it okay.”

Chris’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked out at the view, considering that. Since moving from Samwell to San Francisco after his parents’ Master's degrees, he had lived in the same house until moving back to Samwell this year. He couldn’t imagine moving about so much, even within the same state, and the idea of attempting to persuade his parents to move was incomprehensible to him. Even when he had set his mind on Sharks High School Hockey, he hadn’t asked his parents for anything more than their support, and it had been them who had suggested him going to a private school. For the year and a bit before he had his driving license they ferried him to the other city without any complaint or suggestion of them moving closer to San Jose. 

“Right, well I'm getting down,” Nursey said, but he didn't make any move other than a minute shuffle.

Dex chuckled quietly. With one fluid movement, he ducked under Chris's branch so that he was in front of Nursey, back against a split in the trunk for support, and both hands out in offering. “Put your foot here,” he said, and there was a softness in his voice now. Nursey stared at him suspiciously. “Come on, Nursey. Trust me.”

“If I fall out of this tree, Poindexter, I'm blaming you,” Nursey grumbled, even as he reached out blindly with his foot until Dex grabbed his ankle and guided it into position. “There's a good reason my ma never let me do this, you know.”

Chris slid down, climbing until he could drop himself to the ground. “I'll catch you!”

“Shit, C, I'll squash you.”

“You're fine,” Dex told him. “Left hand here.”

Finally, with a lot of grumbling, some panicked arguing when Dex took his hand off Nursey’s ankle to climb a little lower himself, and a lot of encouragement from Chris, Nursey got both feet on the grass again.

“Let's not do that again.”

“That's offensive to my upbringing, Nurse,” Dex teased.

“You making me do that means you have to go jump in a pile of leaves.”

* * *

Ransom and Holster said that Dex and Nursey were to sit next to each other on the bus which suited Chris who had no idea how he was to pick between them otherwise. Instead, he sat by Vizzy, and they got dibs on the double seat in front of them for all their goalie gear. Vizzy was asleep before they were on the highway, so Chris sat sideways into the aisle to talk to Nursey and Dex while the three of them ate the tubs of food Bitty had made for them. Holster shushed them when they got too loud for him to be able to hear Downton Abbey.

“I can't believe you're watching Downton Abbey,” Nursey chirped. 

“So much elitist shit,” Dex agreed.

“Whitest show ever, and awful handling of depression.”

“NO TALKING WHILE I EDUCATE OUR CAPTAIN.”

“Downton isn't an education, bro,” Dex replied and Nursey held a hand up for a high five. Five minutes later they were silently arguing over space to do their homework, and Chris had to check with Lardo that he hadn’t imagined the moment of agreement between them.

* * *

“Chowder. I have a mission for you,” Ransom whispered at the diner they ended up at for team lunch. He held out a bottle of ketchup. “Shoe check someone on the team. Bitty’s an easy target if you want a hint.”

Chris shook his head a little. He couldn’t do that to Bitty after everything he'd done for the frogs. Still, he crouched as subtly as possible while Holster had everyone distracted by a loud anecdote about one of his professors. He crawled between legs until he found someone who didn't sense him there or already have their feet tucked back defensively. When there was a splodge of ketchup on Ollie’s sneaker, he backed up again and returned to his seat, cheeks burning. To his surprise, Ollie winked at him, then nudged Bitty with his elbow. “Hey, Bits?”

Bitty looked at him questioningly.

“Shoe check.”

Chris stared in confusion, until Bitty pushed his chair back to reveal ketchup smeared on the side of his shoe. Ollie grabbed a napkin to wipe the remains off his own sneaker, and Chris sighed. Apparently if he didn't want Bitty to get shoe checked he should also avoid the people sitting next to him.

* * *

The roadie was a success, but Chris was tired when they came back. It was one of the difficult things about being a goalie: he didn’t get as much of a break. So, at team breakfast their first morning back in Samwell, he didn't talk much. Conversation revolved around the news that Jack was going to Winter Screw with tennis star Camilla Collins, so it was interesting enough for Chris to listen to without feeling like he had to give his input. He deduced that another tennis player had mentioned the date to Ransom at the cereal bar, and now, as they all cleared away their empty trays, the upperclassmen were chirping their captain for not telling anyone that he had asked her. Jack rolled his eyes and muttered something about a seminar before hurrying away. A few other members of the team also headed off to classes, or else went off on their separate ways, and the few of them who were left carried on to the Haus.

“What’s up Poindexter?” Holster asked, and Chris turned to see that he was trailing behind the rest of them, lost in thought.

Dex groaned. “Just all this talk of Screw. I don’t know what to do for Nursey. Isn’t it, like, really insensitive to set him up with someone?”

Chris stared at him. “What?”

“If he's asexual! Or… on the ace spectrum, at least.”

Chris felt the surprise rolling off everyone there. He himself had mostly forgotten that conversation two months before when Nursey had come out to them. It seemed that Dex had not only remembered, but had since been doing some research. Ransom and Holster exchanged a look which was as nonplussed as Chris felt, and for a moment nobody knew what to say. Dex actually had a very good point. Finally, it was Shitty who dropped back so that he was walking next to Dex, and ruffled his hair with an expression akin to pride.

“Our frogs are growing.”

Dex pulled away from the touch, but turned to look at Shitty in desperation. “You've known Nursey the longest. Help me.”

“You're right, this would make some people on the ace spectrum very uncomfortable, but everyone is different. What the best thing to do is ask  _ him  _ what he wants. I can tell you that I'm pretty sure he will be okay with it, because he's dated people before and gone to proms and homecoming dances and things with people, but whoever you go for, they can't be a dick about it and they definitely can't be assuming sex might be on the table at the end of it.”

Dex didn’t particularly look reassured or any less confused by Shitty’s words, so Chris came up on his other side and gave him a nudge. “I’ll help you find someone! We can go and talk to Nursey about if he’s got a type and then we’ll find the perfect Screw date.”

“Perfect!” Shitty exclaimed before Dex could respond. “You two can focus on your fellow frog, Nursey already has Dex covered and we’ll look for one for Chowder.”

“Look for a what?” asked Bitty, catching up with them with a Stop and Shop bag full of flour.

“A Screw date. We’ll look for one for you, too,” Ransom promised. Bitty didn’t look thrilled at the idea.

“Oh.”

“We’ll have to update the spreadsheet.”

“Chowder, what’s your type?” Holster asked. Bitty frowned at him, but said nothing.

“Oh! Um…” Chris tried to find the link between the girls he had found attractive in the past. “I don’t know if I really have one? Nice?” Although, when he thought about it, he had ended up with not-so-nice girls a few too many times. There was the long-term girlfriend who was fine with him calling himself a boy, but freaked out when he started taking hormones. Then the girl who turned out to just be curious about what his genitals looked like. And, of course, the first person he ever slept with: a closeted lesbian who thought a trans guy was the perfect way to “experiment” with everybody thinking she was open and accepting, rather than realizing the truth about her sexuality. Chris still felt sick thinking about her sometimes. “Er… Nice and open-minded and accepting of people for who they are,” he elaborated. Shitty grimaced sympathetically.

“Bro, of course,” Ransom said seriously. “We would never go for a dick.”

Chris rubbed his neck awkwardly at the wording. Holster misinterpreted his discomfort. “Unless you want dick, of course.”

“Uh.”

“Guys,” Bitty piped up. “We don’t judge gender on dicks, remember?”

Chris felt himself going red, but thankfully he didn’t have to feel self-conscious about it, because Dex’s cheeks were flushed as well, and Bitty blushed a little as he spoke.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Holster kicked at a few pebbles, then looked back at Chris. “Seriously, though, bro. Is gender a factor?”

“Uh, I’m straight,” Chris told him. “So… girls.”

“Got it.”

Ransom was tapping at his phone. “Hey, Bits, do you think last year the issue was being set up with athletes? Maybe going for someone not involved in sports would be better?”

Chris let out a breath as the attention was moved away from him.

* * *

“Dex has a question for you,” Chris told Nursey that evening when they sat on the floor of the living room in the Haus watching ESPN highlights.

“Is that right?”

Dex blushed. “Uh. I— Is it actually okay if I set you up with someone for Screw? Even though you're, uh, ace?”

“That's fine. I'm cool with it. Anyone you want. Hey, but you're never going to beat the girl I found for you.”

“This is the no phone or email girl?”

Nursey grinned and nodded.

“I'm going to set you up with the most obnoxious but simultaneously boring person I can find.”

“Aw, Dexy, I know it'll be hard seeing me with someone else, but you don't have to do that. I'll still only have eyes for you.”

Chris's eyes bugged, but Dex just held his middle finger up at Nursey.

“Fuck you.”

“If you want.”

“Oh my God, Nursey, stop.”

“Maybe we could—”

Chris winced. They looked like they could be settling in for the night. Despite some moments where he thought they were getting along, they still bickered more than anything else. “Maybe we could talk about something else?” he suggested, a frantic edge to his voice.

The two of them sighed in tandem. “Sure, C,” Nursey said.

“Sorry, C. Uh. Wicks made me watch a ton of Aces interviews earlier.”

“He so needs to chill. He’s crushing on Parse big time.”

“What?” Chris asked. “Wicks is?”

Nursey snorted. “Yeah, man. You should have heard him going on about that hatty against Calgary last week.”

“I wonder what Jack thinks of it,” Dex mused. “He and Parse played together, right? Do you reckon he’d be gushing about it Wicky-level if he was less… Jack Zimmermann?”

Shitty groaned. “What are you even on about, Poindexter?”

Dex shrugged. “Just… is it cool to ask him what he thinks of how Parse is playing at the moment?”

Chris raised an eyebrow. He might have only been young when the rumors about Jack and Kent Parson had been flying around, but he remembered them. He had been considering the topic taboo.

“I, ah—” Shitty pulled a face. “Maybe not.”

_ Yes _ , Chris thought. That topic was definitely remaining taboo.

* * *

It turned out that asking for a subject change whenever it looked like Dex and Nursey were going to argue worked perfectly for diffusing the situation. It didn’t take long, however, for it to backfire on Chris.

“Okay. We won’t talk about that,” Dex said a couple of mornings later, as he cast the copy of the Samwell Daily that they had been discussing aside. “You know what we still haven’t talked about? Chowder’s puck thing.”

“Hm.” Nursey looked thoughtful. “So we haven’t.”

“So what’s that about, C?”

“I don’t know. I guess when I touch them and I’m not in a rink or on the ice, it just creeps me out. Like, they’re so unnatural. I don’t know.”

“Right, but what if you got a shutout–would you keep the puck?”

“Oh, I dunno. Good question!” Chris tried to imagine the situation. He had never been offered the puck before, and because he hadn’t been interested in having it, he had never asked.

“You don’t want to mess with superstitions,” Nursey said seriously.

Dex rolled his eyes. “It’s a bit irrational, Nurse.”

“Oh, come on, we all have our things!”

“Yeah, I don’t have any superstitions.”

Chris knew that this was one of those times, and that he should intervene, but he found himself frowning at Dex instead, as Nursey made a sceptical noise. “I bet you have at least one.”

“I really don’t.”

“Probably eight.”

“You’ve got to have one,” Chris added.

Dex shot him a betrayed look. “I  _ don’t.” _

“You always clean the bedroom before we leave it for the game," Nursey told him.

“I do that every day, Nurse, that’s just being tidy.”

“You always have jam on toast on game days!” Chris offered. Dex had definitely had that before their first game.

“I didn’t have that last time. I had bacon and eggs for breakfast then.”

“You—” Nursey dragged the word out, searching desperately for another superstition to offer up.

“I’m serious, guys, you’re never going to find one, because I  _ don’t have any.” _

“You want to bet?”

“What?”

“I bet we can find one.”

Dex held his hand out. “You won’t.”

Nursey shook the proffered hand, and then nudged Chris to do the same. “We will, Poindexter, do not doubt us.”

“Ooh, so if Nursey and I prove you’re superstitious, we win!” Chris told Dex.

“Win what?”

Nursey shrugged. “Yo, I don’t even know, bro, but you shook on it.”

“We should figure out what we win,” Chris said.

“You’re not going to win anyway, so I don’t see the point,” Dex grumbled.

“I’d take bragging rights,” Nursey decided.

* * *

Between preparation for their suddenly busy game schedule, an increasing academic workload, and his friendship with Dex and Nursey, Chris had almost forgotten the homesickness of the week before. He had thrown himself into trying to keep his best friends from arguing with fervor, and, as a result, became the victim of many more chirps. He could handle the teasing if it meant that they were uniting over it.

Their game that Friday was at home, and Chris spent most of his morning class texting Nursey under the desk as they conspired to figure out what Dex’s superstitions might be. He kept an eye on Dex throughout lunchtime, then had to hold in a sigh when Dex didn’t turn towards the Haus as they left. Nursey texted him again just as Chris was settling down on the couch for his nap.

> _ Nursey_  
>  He’s being contrary just to make a point  
>  I haven’t picked up on anything.

* * *

The only thing worse than them losing that evening was how certain Chris was that it was his fault. He had followed his usual pregame rituals to the letter, but each one was tainted by his obsession with watching Dex. Then, his focus had been all gone and he let in every one of the goals which led to their demise. Not only that, but if Dex hadn’t been on top form, that could also be blamed on Chris, for he was the one who had pushed Dex into avoiding his own rituals. They should have known that Dex was too stubborn to have folded and let them see whatever he normally did. Luck was never going to have been on their side that night.

“Shut up, Chowder,” was all Ransom said when Chris tried to apologise.

“But—”

“Seriously, Chow, it wasn’t your fault,” Holster said. “It’s a team game. We shouldn’t have been letting so many get to you, and the forwards should have had a stronger attack. It just wasn’t our game.”

* * *

Despite their reassurances, Chris resolved to make amends the next day, and he left Dex alone. He texted Nursey who agreed to do the same. It might not have brought him any closer to figuring out what superstitions his friend might have, but they were rewarded with a win and they weren’t even out the changing rooms by the time Ransom had put a kegster announcement out on Facebook.

Chris spent a while chatting with Bitty, until someone from a class started talking to him, and after that he weaved in and out of the crowd to find Dex so that he could apologize for earlier in the week. As he approached the edge of the room where Dex was leaning against the wall, Chris saw Nursey mutter something to him and gesture across the room. Dex went red, responded with a snarky twist of the mouth, and walked away. Chris turned to follow, but Nursey caught his eye.

“What’s going on?”

Nursey sighed. Now that Chris was closer, he could see that Nursey was looking a little green. “He’s, uh… He’s going to wheel a girl. We were talking about— It’s not important.”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You don’t look too good.”

Nursey put his cup down on a nearby table. “I guess I shouldn’t drink any more of that, then.”

Chris gave his elbow a tug, and guided him past where Dex was grinding against a girl, out to the porch.

“Does it bother you?” he asked. “Dex—”

“No.” The word was out of Nursey’s mouth much too quickly.

“Is it that if he takes her back, it’ll be your dorm?”

Nursey screwed up his nose. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Fuck.”

Chris knew that he would never be able to understand what Nursey felt when he was dragged into conversation about sex, or otherwise reminded how focused on it other people could be, so he didn’t know what to say to comfort him. “Do you want to stay in my room tonight?”

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”

Nursey bumped their shoulders together. “Thanks, C.”

They fell into a relaxed silence, watching people coming and going through the door to the Haus, until Nursey spoke again. “Why do you do it?”

However hard he thought, Chris couldn’t figure out what he was referring to. “What do I do?”

“You always try and keep everyone happy. You've been interrupting Dex or me if you think we’re about to argue, and you don't chirp back when we turn it on you. Your face when Bitty got shoe-checked after you tried to avoid it— That’s because you figured he probably doesn't see the funny side of it as much as some people, right? You were trying to protect him. You’re always trying to protect everyone.”

“The team has each other’s backs, right? That's just how it’s supposed to be. I know you two getting along won't fix everything in the world, but if I can stop you from arguing, it at least feels like the team will get better luck. Call it superstition, or karma, or whatever, but that’s what I believe.”

A soft smile played on Nursey's lips. “You're a really good person, C, you know that?”

Chris didn't know how to reply.

* * *

Chris wasn’t sure what shifted between Nursey and Dex after that, but he was confused to find that the tentative friendship they had developed over the past couple of weeks only got stronger. They still chirped each other, and misconstrued what the other was saying on a daily basis, but whatever talk they had had in private after the kegster, those moments of disagreement were finally outnumbered by camaraderie, and the closer they got to Thanksgiving break, the easier it became for all three of them to fall back on the others for support. More than one evening was spent with all three of them doing their homework in the company of each other, sitting on the floor of one of their rooms to eat take-out, and NHL highlights playing in the background.

Life carried on at an alarming pace. Holster had grilled Chris about suitors for Winter Screw, while Ransom plugged information into Excel to see what the spreadsheets said. In turn, Chris and Dex had found a guy in their coding class who seemed chill enough to be Nursey’s date for the dance. Before he knew it, three weeks had passed since their conversation about homesickness. Chris still felt a twist in his stomach when the frogs arrived at the dining halls to find them closed for the holidays, but when Dex suggested they went to the Haus, he could shake the feeling off. Samwell, and these boys, had filled enough of that hole by now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Chris bumps into someone new, and the team celebrate Hausgiving.


	8. Hausgiving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris has a lot to be thankful for

With California too far to fly to for Thanksgiving break, Dex mumbling something about how he couldn’t afford to go home for just a few days, and Nursey shrugging and saying that his family never really did Thanksgiving anyway, the frogs stayed at Samwell. A lot of the team were following suit, because they had a game on the Friday, so only those who were less than a few hours’ drive could see the point in going home.

Tuesday evening, they decided to take advantage of the quiet campus to take a long walk around, culminating in a piggyback race across River Quad. Ransom jumped on Holster’s back before he had even finished suggesting the race, and while Shitty marked a start line by scuffing the ground with his shoe, Bitty and Chris were left to decide which of them would go on Nursey’s back, and which on Dex’s. Bitty was typing at his phone furiously, to see what Twitter thought, while Chris whined that he couldn’t choose between his best friends.

“Brahs! Are you fucking ready?” Shitty called, lining himself up so that he could start the race and make sure that none of them crossed the line too early.

Chris squeaked, and suddenly Dex was in front of him. “Come on, C.”

Bitty had already lifted himself onto Nursey’s back, so Chris wrapped his arms around Dex’s neck and jumped, drawing a groan from him.

“On your marks. Get set. Go!”

They started with a bit of a stagger, before Dex found his feet and they ran. It didn’t take long for Holster to pull ahead of the others, Ransom barely even holding on as he shouted encouragements in his best friend’s ear. Shitty was sprinting backwards in front of them, and for the moment Dex and Nursey were in line with each other. Nursey stumbled a little, but managed to stop himself from falling. Chris turned his head to track the movement as it allowed him and Dex to pull ahead.

With a determined grunt, Dex picked up the pace, to try to catch up to Ransom and Holster. As he felt himself slip, Chris moved his hands to find stability. 

“Those are my eyes, Chowder! You’re covering my fucking eyes!”

Chris squeaked out a “Sorry!”, and moved one hand down to Dex’s shoulder, but the damage was already done. Before he could move the other, they were tripping over the curb of the sidewalk and tumbling into a crowd of girls who had been watching their race. Chris practically flung himself off Dex’s back to stop himself from crushing him, only to fall on one of the girls and drag her down to the ground. Leaves flew up in the air as they landed.

“You stealing my moves, Chowder?” Nursey called over to him, but Chris ignored him in favor of the girl lying next to him.

“Oh my god, are you okay? I’m so sorry!” He scrambled to his feet, and held a hand out to help her up.

“I’m okay! Are you? You got, like, eight foot of air!” She laughed as her hands flew up to check her beanie hadn't been pushed out of place.

“I’m okay. I’m so sorry. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“It’s all good. Seriously.”

Chris’s mouth twitched when he recognized the accent. “Like, totally seriously?”

She blinked twice, then shook her head. “Don’t.”

Chris grinned. “Where are you from?”

She shook her head again. “I’m not telling you.”

“Come on! I’m from San Francisco. Californians have got to stick together over here. San Fernando Valley?”

“No! I’m not a valley girl!”

“Don’t deny yourself, babe!” one of the other girls standing nearby called. Chris finally tore his eyes away from the one in front of him to look over her shoulder at a blonde who Ransom and Holster were talking to. In the background, he could see Nursey, Shitty and Dex crowded together, a distance away from the rest of them, and Bitty was hovering at the side on his phone.

“March is a proper valley girl. I’m not.”

Chris chuckled, and looked back at her. He couldn’t keep thinking of her as ‘the girl’. “I’m Chris. Well, these guys call me Chowder, but that’s a hockey nickname, but you can call me whatever you-”

“Hi, Chris. I’m Caitlin. Caitlin Farmer. I’m on the volleyball team. You play hockey?”

Chris nodded, and Caitlin looked like she was about to say something, when Shitty yelled something down the road.

“Excuse me, we have to go,” Holster said, and he tugged Chris away.

Chris gaped at him. “But-”

“Oh! I guess I’ll see you around, Chris?”

He couldn’t tell if Caitlin really looked disappointed or if he was imagining it. “For sure!” he called, and her face lit up. Chris reluctantly let Holster drag him away, but less than half a block away he wished he hadn’t. “I didn’t get her number.”

“We found her on Facebook,” Bitty told him.

“What?”

Bitty looked at his phone and read out the profile. “Caitlin A. Farmer. Studies Psychology at Samwell University. Lives in Topanga, California. From Los Angeles, California. Apparently really hates having her photo taken.”

Chris reached for his phone, but Ransom held a hand out to stop him. “Let us deal with it.”

“Why did you guys run off?” Holster asked, as they finally caught up with Nursey, Dex and Shitty. The three of them exchanged a look and shrugged.

“Are you okay, C?” Nursey deflected.

“Yeah. Are you, Dex?”

Dex shrugged, again. “Sure. So I guess Ransom and Holster won that and none of the rest of us technically finished. Rematch?”

“Y’all are gonna be the death of me,” Bitty sighed.

“Let’s just go back to the Haus,” Chris suggested. He glanced over at Ransom. What exactly was he dealing with?

* * *

It was the middle of the night by the time he got his answer. A text came through with a buzz while Chris was halfway through an episode of  _ How To Get Away With Murder. _  
  


> _Unknown_  
>  Hi, this is Caitlin, from earlier. Is this Chris?  
>  Your teammate, Justin, gave me your number.  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Chris_  
>  HI!!!!  
>  Yes it's Chris!!  
>  Did he say anything else?  
>    
> 
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  That you might be interested in going to Winter Screw with me?  
>  I mean  
>  If you’re not that’s cool  
>  But he said that, so  
>  Anyway.  
>    
> 
> 
> _Chris_  
>  I’d love to!!!  
>  If you want to, that is?  
>    
> 
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Okay!!!!  
>  I mean, yes, I would love to!  
>    
> 
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Great!!!!!!!

His hand shook with excitement and he opened up the SMH Group Chat to let them know the news. The texts had only just sent when his phone started buzzing with responses, but he clicked out of the chat, and back to his conversation with Caitlin.  


> _Chris_  
>  It's still a while before Screw. Do you maybe want to do something else before?   
>    
> 
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Oh!! We might have to see? It's less than two weeks really and we're doing a team thing for Thanksgiving and then there's games and school. But if I can I'd like to!!!!  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Chris  
>  _ Oh right. I guess I'm pretty busy with all those things as well.
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  I really wish I could just say yes!  
>    
> 
> 
> _Chris_  
>  It's okay!! There's no pressure!  
>    
> 
> 
> __
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Okay!  
>  Well I have to go to sleep. I'll text you soon!  
>    
> 
> 
> _Chris  
>  _ Okay!!  
>  Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!

* * *

__

Chris was glued to his phone for the whole of Wednesday. Whenever Dex or Nursey caught him, he was subjected to relentless chirps, but it was with a grin that he asked if they didn't have anything better to do than watch him text.

“This is volleyball girl, right?”

“Yeah, Dex,” Nursey said with an exasperated sigh. “The one you sent flying, remember?”

“Chowder covered my eyes! And he’s the one who flung himself into her, not me. I didn’t even  _ see  _ her.”

“You didn’t even see any of them, that’s the point.”

“Guys,” moaned Chris as Dex threw Nursey a poisonous glare.

“Whatever,” Nursey sighed. “I’m gonna go chill outside for a bit.”

“But it’s cold,” Chris told him. Nursey was already halfway out the door and moments later he was throwing himself on the ground at the foot of Shitty’s sun lounger.

Dex watched him for a moment, then turned back to Chris. “Mario Kart?”

* * *

As per Bitty’s requests, Chris put on a button-up shirt and the only sweater he owned without a hood before heading to the Haus for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. Jack was the only person at the kitchen table, already back from his morning run and digging into a plateful of eggs. Bitty was already rushing around the kitchen, doing preparation for dinner, but when he saw Chris he took the time to serve a fried egg on a piece of toast for him. One by one, the rest of the team started to trickle in. Chris discovered that Shitty had gone to his dad’s house for the day, and Lardo was also visiting family, as well as a couple of the other New Englanders on the team, or else they had family visiting in Samwell. That still left fifteen hockey players crammed into the kitchen of the Haus.

Holster insisted on them watching the Macy’s Parade, so most of them moved into the den, and then a lazy morning turned into a lazy afternoon, with energy only being exerted in shouting at the football games. Halfway through the first game, the frogs grew tired and went back through to the kitchen to see if Bitty needed any help.

“I’ll watch the 49ers later,” Chris was saying, “But I never really got football?”

“What is there to get? Never mind. I wasn’t really into that game anyway,” Dex said.

“Isn’t it very good?” Bitty asked, glancing over their shoulders to have a look at the score. “Coach’ll probably not be very happy I missed it, ‘specially when they’re all so big for playoff spots.”

Nursey shrugged. “There’ll be highlights. Can we do anything?”

“Sure thing. Here, you can prep some of these vegetables for me.”

With all three of them working on vegetables while Bitty dealt with everything else, it didn’t take very much time, though Chris reckoned they might have been even quicker if Bitty hadn't spent so long hovering nervously, then taken the knife off Nursey after a close call with his thumb. When they were done, Bitty suggested they help make some of the pies, but within minutes he was shooing Chris out of the kitchen for dropping flour on the floor, and Nursey was quick to follow after he tried to guess the amount of sugar.

“You look way too smug with yourself right now, Poindexter!” Nursey called when Dex stopped him from re-entering the kitchen, and turned back to the pie which Bitty was almost letting him make unsupervised now that he had proved himself capable of following recipes.

“Can we play a game or something?” Chris asked, squeezing himself between Ollie and Ransom on the green couch.

“Nah, bro, board games got banned,” Ransom told him. “Holtzy and Jack always fight.”

Resigned to watching the football, Chris sat back and pulled his phone out to send Caitlin another text.

> _Chris_  
>  Happy Thanksgiving!!!!  
>  (Again!)  
>  Everyone’s watching the football here.  
>    
> 
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!  
>  Same here!!  
>  Are you not into football?  
>    
> 
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Not really???  
>  I’ll watch it, but I never really got into it, and I never know what’s going on.  
>    
> 
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Oooh!!  
>  Do you want me to tell you?  
>  What’s going on, I mean?  
>    
> 
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Oh!  
>  You don’t have to do that.  
>    
> 
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  No, I want to!!  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Chris  
>  _ Well okay, then?

Her next text took longer to come through, but when it did, there was a detailed analysis of the teams playing that day and what different outcomes in the current game would mean for the NFC playoffs. Then she sent him an explanation of what had happened so far, and for the rest of the game, Chris took his commentary from Caitlin.

* * *

Bitty suggested they say grace before dinner, to uproar from the rest of the room.

“What? Why not?!” He looked more disappointed than Chris had expected.

“There's like five different religions in this room, bro,” Holster pointed out.

“Four,” corrected Bitty. “Why does that mean we can't be grateful for having food on the table? It's _Thanksgiving._ ”

“I don't know, Wicky must get a category to himself,” Ransom muttered. 

“I'm a scientologist,” one of the seniors offered.

“That doesn't count,” Ollie said with a roll of the eyes. Chris couldn’t tell if he was talking about Wicky or Gozer.

“Yeah, I actually just said five because I forgot Lardo wasn’t here.”

Bitty huffed. “Fine! Shut up and eat, all of ya, before it gets cold. Nursey, honey, those potatoes there are the ones done without butter, and I did the other vegetables with oil as well. Do you want the beans passing?”

“When are we going to do what we’re thankful for?” Chris asked, potato splattering out his mouth.

“Is that an actual thing people actually do?” Dex asked.

“Nope,” Nursey replied. 

“We always did!”

“We can do it before dessert,” Bitty assured him. “Dex helped make a pecan pie, but we haven’t put it in yet so that it'll still be warm when we eat it. But it means there'll be a break.”

“No pumpkin?”

“You really think for the fourteen of you I only made one pie? Have some faith. The pumpkin ones are already out. Pecan's for people who don't like pumpkin pie, or can't eat dairy.”

* * *

It took a while for them to reach the point where they were ready to move onto dessert. Bitty had laid on delicious food which had them having thirds and fourths, and, in Holster’s case, fifths. Chirps flowed as freely as the drinks and whenever a vegetable was thrown at someone for pushing the limits of teasing, Bitty frowned disapprovingly.

As soon as Dex had cleared his plate, he was up and putting pie in the oven in a way which made Chris do a double take.

“Hey there, Bitty 2.0.”

Dex's cheeks and ears colored. “I know, I know. Hockey players baking. My brother won let me live this down.”

_ “Dude,”  _ Ransom laughed. 

“Come on, everyone, Chowder wants to do what we’re thankful for!” Bitty said.

“Well then, Chowder should go first seeing as he’s the only one prepared for this,” Nursey suggested. Chris narrowed his eyes at him, but then smirked. As the youngest of the family, he always got to go first at home, and his family had never really let go of the habit of allowing him to get away with cop-out answers.

_ “Fine.  _ I’m thankful for this team. Now you all have to think of something more inventive.”

The table erupted in complaints.

“Oh come on!”

“Such a cheat, Chow.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m thankful for Bittle’s cooking,” Jack offered.

“Bro, we’re Canadian, we don’t have to join in,” Ransom muttered.

“If I have to, you have to,” Holster said. “Anyway, he’s only saying that because Bitty’s cooking would have been his backup, but it’s okay if Jack’s going to take ours, I’m going to say what his should have been. I’m thankful for hockey.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is that pie ready yet, Dex? I can’t cope with any more of this. I’m thankful for Dex today, y’all, he’s been a star.”

Dex blushed again under Bitty’s compliments, and ducked his head, taking much too long to check the time. “One minute and ten seconds on the pie.”

Bitty raised his eyebrows, speechless for a moment. He recovered with a laugh and a shake of the head. “It doesn’t have to be that exact. Go on, get it out, let’s have a look at it.”

Chris stood to get a better look as Dex opened the oven.

“It smells  _ hella  _ good, Dex,” Nursey said. All three of them, now, were hovering by the open open, looking at the pie Dex carefully slid onto a teatowel.

“Come on, let’s have a picture!” Bitty suggested, phone already in hand. Jack made a tutting sound and ducked around the back of them to close the oven door. As he started washing up the dirty plates, Chris and Nursey crowded around Dex.

“We don’t need a picture,” Dex argued, but he angled the pie towards the camera all the same.

“Seriously, it looks great,” Nursey told him, reaching a hand up to ruffle his hair. “You should be proud of yourself.”

“Yeah, you should!” Bitty agreed.

“Uh, sure,” Dex murmured.

“Oh, that’s such a cute picture. Can I put it on Twitter?” Bitty turned his phone around to show them. Dex blushed again, but shrugged and agreed.

* * *

After pie and then collapsing in front of the television for the end of the final game, the team could feel themselves slipping into a turkey hangover. 

“Let's just all sleep here,” someone suggested. Chris was too tired to try and place the voice. He just shifted so that his feet were in Holster’s lap, and glanced lazily around the room. It had been a struggle to fit two thirds of an NCAA hockey team in the one room, but they had managed it by lying on top of each other. The seniors had the couch, and everyone else were on the floor with some blankets dragged down from Bitty’s bedroom. Chris vaguely registered how strange it was to see Bitty sat with the other sophomores instead of next to Jack, though he could definitely understand why he didn’t want to be a part of the defensemen pile-up taking place by Chris’s legs.

The front door slammed and all of them jumped, but relaxed the moment they heard a voice calling, “I’m home! Back in time for real fucking Thanksgiving!” Shitty paused in the doorway, looking around. “Aw, you guys are having a team cuddle without me? Fuck that.” The next moment he was jumping over the arm of the couch and landing in Jack’s lap, legs stretched out over Mortara, Gozer and Einhardt.

They settled back into their sleepy silence, apart from the occasional chirp or comment on the game. It was probably the quietest Chris had ever known the team to be. Then, the game was over and they stayed in the same position. Time passed without real meaning, and Chris was somewhere between sleep and wakefulness when Jack broke the silence to tell them they should go to bed.

“Can't move,” Chris replied.

Jack hummed. “It's just as I thought.”

“What?”

“All that turkey's going to make you slow for tomorrow, Chowder.”

That made him sit up. “Oh no. It is, but it was so good. Oh no!”

Dex laughed and held a hand out to drag him to his feet. “Come on, the walk back to your dorm will help.”

Slowly, everyone but those who lived in the Haus prepared to leave. They thanked Bitty again, and made arrangements for breakfast the next morning, then headed back to their respective dorms. On the way, Chris checked his phone and couldn’t help but smile at the message on the screen.

> _ Caitlin  
>  _ All that turkey and I need to sleep, so goodnight!!!!  
>  Talk to you soon xx

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My exclamation mark key has never been so used before
> 
> Next up is... still not Winter Screw to be honest. Lots of games. Going to a volleyball game?? Something about Dex. I start back at work tomorrow so who even knows what will end up in this next chapter and when it will be.


	9. Samwell Women's Volleyball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris and Caitlin get to know each other more. Chris makes a plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger/Content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- Mixing alcohol with prescription medication (this doesn't happen 'on screen' so to speak, but it is a key topic)  
> \- Very high levels of anxiety to the point of exhaustion/illness  
> \- A pretty intense conversation about asexuality/sex etc. for more info see end notes  
> \- Some talk of ableism  
> \- Brief (and very vague) mention of triggers

> **Conversation: Caitlin  
> ** _Caitlin_  
>  Just saw that you won your game last night! Congrats!!!
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Thank-you!!  
>  You did really well in your game, too!!! I thought that call in the final set was totally unfair!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  You watched?!
> 
> _Chris_  
>  I did! Online, after ours finished!!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Maybe sometime you could come to an actual match?
> 
> _Chris_  
>  That would be great!!! I used to really like going to the volleyball matches at high school!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Yeah? And I could come to one of your games, too?
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Of course!! Do you like hockey?
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  I go to every LA/SJ game @Staples!  
>  Or I did when I was at home
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Oh wow!  
>  Erm  
>  Do you support the Kings, then?
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  SJ!!!  
>  Staples is just easier to get to!
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Oh!!  
>  I support the Sharks too!!!!!!!  
>  I was worried for a moment!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  !!!
> 
> _Chris_  
>  !!!!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  That turned out well, didn’t it?  
>  Does it change anything if I admit that I just support the team who won the first game I ever went to?
> 
> _Chris_  
>  I don’t think it matters how you end up supporting a team!  
>  If you stick by them, you can still call yourself a fan!!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Thanks! :)
> 
> _Chris_  
>  We’ve had scouts at our games for Jack. It’s really nerve-wracking
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Aw, but I bet you’ve done great!!!  
>  Maybe they’ll consider you next!
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Don’t say that!!
> 
> _Caitlin_  
>  Okay, I won’t jinx it!!!

Chris grinned. Texting Caitlin proved to be a good distraction from the fact that the assistant GM of the Falconers had also been at their game the night before and talked to Jack afterwards. As Chris approached the Haus, he hastily put his phone away. The last thing he wanted right now was to endure more chirps about Caitlin. Nobody was in the kitchen, but there was half a plate of brownies with a note declaring them weed-free and for everyone to help themselves to in Bitty’s handwriting. Chris took two and went through to the den, where Holster was lying on the green couch, staring at the ceiling, his phone forgotten on his chest while Nursey read an extract from the book he was studying in a mocking tone.

“I can’t believe you have to write about this as if it’s a serious piece of work,” Holster said, with a shake of the head.

Across the room, Dex was looking at something on Shitty’s laptop. Shitty was the one who grinned at Chris when he walked in.

“All right, Chowder?”

“Hi. Uh, where’s everyone else?”

“Bitty’s crashing Ransom and Jack’s Canada date,” Holster replied.

“Or Jack’s crashing Bitty and Ransom’s,” Shitty added.

“Brah, maybe Ransom’s crashing Bitty and Jack’s.”

“They’re at Annie’s,” Dex said loudly.

Chris nodded and sat down next to Nursey, who added, “They’ll be back soon. Ransom texted to ask what we wanted for the kegster ages ago.”

Sure enough, it was only another five minutes of Chris and Holster listening to how ridiculously entitled the book for Nursey’s so-called feminist lit class was before the door opened and Jack, Ransom and Bitty’s arrival was announced by conversation and the rustling of shopping bags.

“We got a turkey!” called Ransom.

“What the fuck, Rans? Thanksgiving was two days ago,” Holster said, sitting up, even though he still couldn’t see through the doorway.

“Thanksgiving was over a month ago, bro. It doesn’t mean we can’t get cheap turkey when it’s going. You can eat turkey any time. We had it on Thursday!”

“Because it was fucking Thanksgiving!”

“Don’t be negative on Shabbos, bro.”

Holster groaned and lay back down again. “Jack, man, I trust you to make them be sensible when I am respecting the laws of our people and you are not, carrying fucking turkeys across campus.”

Jack’s low chuckle could be heard from the kitchen, under Bitty shouting, “I _am_ sensible, Adam Birkholtz.”

A few minutes later, Ransom came in with a tub of ice cream and a handful of spoons.

“We had to take this out the freezer to fit the turkey in.”

They crowded around to eat.

“That turkey is going to be there forever now,” Holster said, pointing at Ransom with a spoon. “We’re never going to remember to take it out and it will just stay in that freezer until after the frogs graduate.”

“You’re so grouchy today.”

“Huh. Marleau. I haven’t seen you wear his before,” interrupted Jack.

“Oh, yeah.” Chris looked down at the hoodie he was wearing. “I prefer my Nemo one. Or Thornton. But we need some extra luck tonight, after the bad couple of games we’ve had.”

“How many Sharks hoodies do you have?” Bitty asked from the doorway.

“Uh…” Chris tried to count them up on his fingers, but soon gave up. “Are we including ones I don’t wear? What about jerseys?”

Bitty shook his head in disbelief, and disappeared back into the kitchen to start preparing for the kegster.

* * *

The next day, Caitlin was quiet as she prepared for their second game of the weekend that evening, and she was nervous because her coaches had been dropping hints that she would be starting the game, so Chris had time to make a plan. He walked to the Haus to see if Dex and Nursey were there to drag along, and on his way he Googled everything he needed to know. When he reached a crossing, he lifted his head from his phone, and caught sight of a flash of familiar red hair up ahead.

“Hi, Dex!”

Chris broke into a run halfway across the road to catch up with his friend, ready to tell him what he wanted to do that evening, but when Dex turned around, Chris’s steps faltered. Dex looked furious.

“W-What happened?”

“Nursey’s sick.” The words were spluttered with rage.

“Is it flu or something?”

Dex sucked in a breath. “No, he drank with his fucking pills _again_ and he's been hungover all day. Nothing's making it better.”

Chris’s eyes widened and questions swarmed around his mind. Nursey had pills he wasn’t meant to drink with? This wasn’t the first time he’d broken that rule? “Oh no! And it's pretty late in the day now, too. Were you going to the Haus? You, uh, I don't think you should tell Jack about this? Not that— I just—” he sighed. They all knew the rumors about Jack’s overdose, and as a team they had all been told the basics of what actually happened. “It might not be good for Jack to know about that? Considering— Well, everything, but I expect you were going to find Bitty anyway so—” He trailed off as he became aware that Dex wasn’t paying him any attention. He was staring, with glazed eyes, at the ground behind Chris. “Dex? Are we going to go and get Bitty?”

Dex just nodded and let Chowder tug gently on his arm and pull him to the Haus.

It wasn’t until they were outside the frat house that Dex finally seemed to return to the present. He pulled away from Chowder suddenly and marched into the Haus. Chris hurried after him, but when he was there, he wasn’t sure what to do. Dex was moving things around in the spice cabinet, presumably looking for whatever was needed to make one of Nursey’s spiced teas, and Bitty was rooting through the fridge, muttering to himself about what someone who doesn’t eat chicken was supposed to have in their soup when they were ill.

“Uh, Bitty? We don’t think— I mean, you won’t tell Jack about this, will you? That Nursey’s sick?”

Bitty looked up from the cabbage he was holding with a frown. “That depends how he is, Chowder. He could— Oh Lord, I should make corn chowder.”

“Milk,” muttered Dex, moving a pot of thyme to a different shelf.

“Fuck. Why is he so awkward?” Bitty dropped the cabbage back into the bottom of the fridge and pulled out a butternut squash instead. “It’ll have to be vegetables that can make something of themselves then.”

Chris chewed on his lip. “Really, though, I don't think Jack-”

“Okay, I won't tell him unless it's really bad.”

Chris fell silent and watched the two of them bustle around the kitchen.

Ransom barged into the kitchen. “We need you to settle a— ooh, is that soup?”

“Yes it is, and it is for Nursey, who isn’t feeling very well so I’ll listen to whatever y’all are arguing about this time after I’ve taken it to him.”

Ransom looked from Bitty, who was pointedly looking into his pot as he stirred the vegetables, to Dex, whose shoulders were hunched up and tense as he poured spiced black tea into a thermos flask. Finally, his gaze fell on Chris.

“Chowder! Come with me, bro, I need to show you something and get your opinion.”

Chris objected weakly, but Ransom was already steering him out of the room and up the stairs. He was distracted as he watched the YouTube video which had Ransom and Holster worked up, and he wasn’t even sure what his opinion on it was supposed to be. Instead, his eyes kept drifting down to the time in the corner of Holster’s screen. Thirty-five minutes until Caitlin’s game started. Now thirty-four. He pulled out his phone and sent off two texts: one to Bitty to make sure he wasn’t going to tell Jack about Nursey, and one to Dex asking if Nursey felt any better yet and if could Chris come round in a bit.

“So which do you think?” Ransom asked.

Chris blinked. He had no idea what the video was even about. “Uh… They’re both good theories?” Holster and Ransom blinked at him, and he started to panic. Maybe their argument wasn’t over theories at all. “I think you both have good points,” he amended. “Uh, sorry, but I really have to—” He jabbed a thumb towards the door, then backed out of the attic with another, “Sorry.”

His fingers flew across his phone screen again as he hurried out of the Haus.

> **Conversation: Bitty  
> ** _Chris_  
>  Please don’t tell him  
>  I don’t think Jack needs to worry himself with this.
> 
> _Bitty_  
>  It’s okay, Chowder! I just left. Nursey’s alright, he’s just hungover. I won’t tell Jack, but he understands how these things can be, I don’t see why he would care?

> **Frogs Group Chat  
> ** _Nursey_  
>  c? dex is being weird but i know it was you who just texted him. everything chill?
> 
> _Chris_  
>  I was asking if you were okay!  
>  What do you mean he’s being weird?
> 
> _Nursey_  
>  it’s dex he’s always weird.
> 
> _Dex_  
>  You know I’m in this chat, right?
> 
> _Nursey_  
>  i’m good. killer of a hangover, but down to hang if you want to come watch a film or something.
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Actually, I had somewhere I wanted to be this evening, and I was wondering if you guys would join me!!  
>  If you want to that is!  
>  And if it won’t be bad for your head or anything
> 
> _Nursey_  
>  i’ve eaten now, and managed to drag myself out of bed i’m good
> 
> _Dex_  
>  Where did you want to go?
> 
> _Chris_  
>  The SWV game?

* * *

He got to the dorm block just when he was starting to wonder if his phone hadn’t sent the message properly, due to the lack of response from his friends. Standing there, though, and looking oddly like the wrong one of them had spent the day in bed, were Nursey and Dex. Nursey grinned when he saw Chris.

“Are we going, then?”

“Uh… Sure,” Chris said, slowly. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s chill, bro. A bunch of sleep, and some Bitty soup and I’m raring to go.”

Chris’s eyes slid to Dex, taking in how pale and exhausted he looked now that his frenzied anger from earlier had subsided.

“Don’t even go there,” Nursey muttered, and he pulled on both their arms. “We’ve got a volleyball game to get to.”

* * *

They sat down with two minutes left before the game started. Having bought their tickets on the way in, their seats were terrible, but Chris still bounced on his seat as he looked down at the court. He jumped out of the seat completely when the teams ran on, waving to the crowd before they lined up on opposite sites of the court.

“Welcome to Samwell for tonight’s women’s volleyball match. Hosting our match tonight are the Wellies from Samwell University! Wearing number 1, Zoey Lamorne. Number 2 is Fliss Harris. Number 3, Caitlin Farmer-”

Chris squealed loudly, only quieting when Nursey put a hand on his arm. As the announcer continued to introduce the team, Caitlin was scanning the crowd, looking startled to have had such a reception. When her eyes fell on Chris, they widened, but the girl next to her - Harris - nudged her again and she spun back to face the net, her hands raising with the other girls to clap number 6, April Bell.

Chris finally calmed down enough to notice that Dex was now even paler than he had been before.

“Dex? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“That’s— It’s— I— I’ve got to go, C. I’m sorry. I just—”

As Dex pushed past Chris’s legs, he muttered something indecipherable _._

“What the—”

Nursey sighed. “Let it go, C. He’s been acting up all day. You know he told me it was my fault he was freaking out over me being hungover? He just totally over-reacted and then flipped out. Bro needs to chill so bad. Maybe he’ll go back and nap and then stop being so weird tomorrow.”

Chris chewed on his lips. He couldn’t believe that Dex’s behaviour only boiled down to lack of sleep. “Nursey. I— He said you were mixing alcohol with meds?”

Nursey’s jaw clenched. “It’s chill. He’s just being—”

“He was _worried_ about you. He’s— That’s how Jack—”

“Don’t. It’s not the same as with Jack. I can’t— It’s not like that. It’s not _dangerous,_ it just—”

“It can always be dangerous. People can die of alcohol poisoning without any other drugs involved,” Chris told him in undertone. The game was starting, now, but he only half-noticed. “If you’re not supposed to mix them, then there’s a reason for it.”

Nursey closed his eyes, a tear escaping down his cheek. “I know. I know, C, okay? I just— It’s so— It doesn’t warrant Dex worrying himself sick. And the same goes for you. You don’t understand.”

Chris sighed, and watched as Caitlin returned the other team’s serve. Only when the ensuing rally ended with a point on Samwell’s board did he reply. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try if you explain.”

Samwell conceded a point. Nursey groaned, but Chris had a feeling it wasn’t anything to do with his investment in the game.

“They make me feel things that I don’t think I’d feel if I wasn’t on them.”

“The pills?” Chris asked, and Nursey made a noise of assent. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

Nursey shook his head. “ _Yes,_ but not- I mean- It’s complicated. They make me— _want sex._ Those particular ones more than the others, so even though I know they’re worse to drink with, I feel— If I’m not feeling anxious, I can just relax with with a few drinks and I can't sleep with anyone because I'm drunk and I don't have to worry about whether I'm actually attracted to whoever I want to sleep with because if I'm not sleeping with them it's not important.”

Chris was silent again, staring at Caitlin as she and the other girls huddled together. She glanced up to where he was in the stands, and the smile she flashed him made his heart jump in his chest. One of the other girls had to grab her wrist to get her attention again, which only made Chris's grin widen.

“Fuck’s sake. Mention sex to a straight guy…”

Chris was smiling too much to do any more than laugh. “Shut up. No, but okay, if it makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t need to get yourself _drunk_ to not consent. What if getting drunk makes you want it more only you can't think of why it's not a good idea?”

“He's better than that; he doesn't—” Nursey cut himself off with a deep sigh. For a moment he stared past Chris, at Dex's vacated seat.

“Wait, who?”

“Nobody. It doesn’t— Just this guy I guess I'm into or something.”

“At Samwell?”

“He's- Chowder, he's in the closet so don't—”

Chris nodded. “Okay. I understand. But did you—”

“Yeah.” He let it out as a breath.

“Does he know you're ace? ...On the spectrum?”

“Yeah. Not at first, but he does now.  And— Well he knows what he needs to, anyway.”

“Okay.” Chris wrapped his hand around Nursey’s. “Either trust him to not force you into anything when you're sober but aren't certain, or ditch him completely. For God’s sake just don't make yourself ill over it.”

“If it’s not forcing, though—”

Chris sighed. “Nursey. Isn’t this why you don’t label it properly? Being ace.”

There was a long pause. One of the Samwell players dove to stop the ball landing on the ground and another practically jumped on top of her to knock it over the net. When they stood up, the first girl was slow to put her weight on her left leg. While someone ran onto the court to have a look at her, Nursey finally spoke. “I wish there was something that I could just know. This was the one thing that I felt like I had control over, and even if nobody else understood, I knew where I stood. Until I didn’t.”

“This isn’t something anyone can control. It doesn’t make you less of a person if you give yourself what you want, you know?”

Nursey didn’t say anything else, but held tightly to his hand until the moment the final point was scored. Then, they were both on their feet, stamping, clapping and shouting their enthusiasm over the win. The teams hugged and shook each other’s hands, and then Caitlin was catching Chris’s eye again. She beckoned him over with a tilt of the head. Hands on Nursey’s shoulders to direct him, Chris headed down the stands until they were level with the court, and Caitlin was pulling them past the officiators who were trying to keep the crowd off the court.

“You didn't say you were coming!”

Chris became acutely aware of the fact that the entire Samwell Women’s Volleyball team were staring at him. “Sorry. Do you mind?”

“Of course not! It's great. I'm glad you're here.”

“Really?”

Nursey nudged him. “Hey, C, I’m gonna go check on Dex, okay? Uh, well, go back and— Yeah. Thanks. For the talk.”

“Of course. Let me know how he is. And take care of yourself, too.”

When he turned back to Caitlin, she looked a little confused. “What was that?”

Chris scratched at the corner of his mouth, nervous to be there. “Oh, uh, both he and his roommate haven’t been very well today. Different things, nothing contagious. I hope.”

His explanation appeared to have done nothing to clear things up for her. “One second,” she said, and she wrapped her hand around his wrist so that she could pull him towards the bench. He watched as she pulled something from the pocket of a bag, but it was too small for him to see. Only when she fitted it into her ear did he work out what it was.

“Oh,” he breathed, but he waited until she had turned back to him before he said any more. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s okay. I lip read. I’m totally used to it.”

Chris bit down on his lip. He had heard those words before; he had _said_ those words before. Being used to something didn’t make it okay.

“Please,” Caitlin said. “I hate it being a thing.”

That, Chris understood. He nodded. When she hesitated awkwardly, he smiled. “I should let you go change, and I don’t know if your team’s doing anything now or if you just want to go and sleep or—”

“You could walk me to my dorm? If you don’t mind waiting for me to shower?”

“Okay!”

> **Conversation: Nursey  
> ** _Nursey_  
>  hey c I just got back. dex is ok he wanted me to say sorry to you for rushing out  
>  i’m going to talk to him tho check he’s really ok and all
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Okay! Thanks for letting me know!!  
>  And keep me updated!  
>  I’m just waiting for Caitlin to come out so I can walk her home but I can come by after if you want?
> 
> _Nursey_  
>  nah bro stay with your girl  
>  i think d needs to be left alone a bit anyway  
>  he’s worn himself out
> 
> _Chris_  
>  I’m not going to stay over with her  
>  If you think he won’t want me there that’s okay!

Chris couldn’t decide how to word his next explanation. It was true that Dex and Nursey had been getting along better recently, but they still argued a lot and he was never sure if they were really friends or just learning how to be civil with each other. Before he could think of a way to ask if Dex was really happy with only Nursey there for him, Caitlin came out the locker rooms and he hastily put his phone away. Her hair was down now, curling around the cochlear implants. Chris felt his cheeks colour a little when he caught himself looking. He reached out for Caitlin’s hand instead, and tried to focus on the sidewalk.

“It was a really good game!” he told her. “I couldn’t tell that it was your first one on the starting line-up at all. You have a really good connection with your team.”

“They’re all great,” she agreed with a smile. “I don’t really want to rehash the game, if that’s okay. The coaches are going to do that tomorrow anyway.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

Her grip around his fingers tightened for a moment, but Chris wasn’t sure if it was just a product of navigating the streets in the dark of the winter’s evening, or if it was something more. The silence roared in his ears like thunder. Reality seemed to have pushed its way in, screaming the fact that he had only just met this girl, and they knew nothing about each other.

“You can ask questions about it if you want.” Caitlin finally spoke, softly, when they had walked a little further. “I don’t mind.”

“You don’t want it to be a thing.”

“But it always will be anyway.” When Chris didn’t respond, Caitlin took it upon herself to provide some answers anyway. “I was born Deaf. I got cochlear implants when I was three. I don’t wear them when I’m playing in case I get hit on the head, and because sometimes the noises get to me. For that matter, I never wear them at hockey games either.”

Chris chuckled. Caitlin shifted her fingers within his again, and carried on with a bolder voice. “I sign, too. My mom never really wanted me to have the implants. She thought of it as my dad throwing money at my disability in the hope it would go away. So I kept learning sign language, even after I could hear. The girls know enough for in games. That, and other signals we’ve come up with.”

Chris nodded.

“This is my building,” she added, pointing at the one across the road.

“Oh. Right. You should go and sleep. And I should check on Nursey and Dex. I, er— That’s what I was saying earlier but you didn’t hear. A couple of the guys on the team. They’ve both been not a hundred percent today, and then Dex ran out at the beginning of your game. I don’t know what happened. He seemed— I don’t know. I should check on them, anyway. They’re roommates but they fight a lot.”

Caitlin blinked a couple of times, and Chris started to worry that she hadn’t caught it all again, but then she replied. “Okay. I hope that all… is okay. I’ll see you on Saturday?”

“Yeah!” Chris beamed, and got a grin in return, just before she disappeared into her building. He turned towards his own block, and pulled his phone out to see the messages which had come through in the meantime.

> **Conversation: Nursey  
> ** _Nursey_  
>  srsly c. he says its chill  
>  k you got me he didn’t exactly say chill

> **Frogs Group Chat  
> ** _Dex_  
>  C, it’s okay. I’m sorry I ran off like that, and I’m not really ready to talk about why. I was reminded of some bad memories. I just want to sleep right now, so there’s no point you coming over. Nursey’s being great, I promise.  
>  Thanks for being a great friend.
> 
> _Chris_  
>  Aww!!  
>  That’s okay!  
>  Thank-you!!!!!!!  
>  Goodnight!! Feel better soon!!!!  
>  Sorry I didn’t reply sooner, I was walking Caitlin back!  
>  I’m so glad you’re both okay.
> 
> _Nursey  
>  _ night, c <3

* * *

The next week moved simultaneously too quickly, and too slowly. Winter Screw seemed like it would never come, but all the deadlines for homework arrived sooner than Chris would hope, and finals had become as common a topic among his fellow students as the upcoming dance.

“Why are we even spending a Saturday night partying when finals start _two days later?_ ” Dex asked at dinner one evening, stabbing his chicken tenders violently with his fork to emphasise his point.

“Okay, bro, firstly, the poor bird’s already dead, leave it alone,” Nursey said. “And secondly, we have a game, so even if we weren’t going on to Screw after, it’s not like you would have studied.”

Dex’s glare suggested otherwise, and Nursey quickly moved his hands off the table so that they were less at risk of ending up speared with a fork.

“Chill, Dex. It’ll be fine.”

“You’re not the one with a date coming from fucking Yale who you don’t even know.”

“Oh, Natalie’s not coming any more.”

This comment only served to panic Dex even more. _“What?”_

“Did I not tell you that? She can’t make it. It’s okay, I asked that girl who always sits in front of us in Key Skills for you. You know, the one with the bright green bag?”

Even though he wasn’t the one being talked to, Chris found himself nodding when he worked out which girl Nursey meant.

“Oh.” Dex bit on his lip, a deep frown between his eyebrows.

“It’s okay. She’s really chill.”

* * *

Finally, the day arrived. Chris sat between Bitty and Jack at lunch, because he knew that Dex and Nursey’s current debate about the function of the police would be too distracting, but he wasn’t listening to Bitty, either, as he told an amused Jack about their game of H.O.R.S.E. a couple of days before, and how Chris was good enough at it to play offensively.

“We’ll keep you in goal today, if that’s okay with you, Chowder,” Jack chirped. Chris just nodded. He heard a soft sigh, then Jack’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Is this about the game, or Screw?”

Chris swallowed. Honestly, he was nervous about both, but he knew what Jack’s concern was. “I’m focused on the game. I promise.”

His fingers itched to check his phone, though, despite Caitlin’s promise that she wouldn’t text him while he was preparing for his game. Sternly, he reminded himself to leave it in his bag until after the game. From now, until buzzer, his only preoccupation should be his crease and the puck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Nursey. Why do you do this.
> 
> The first time Nursey found himself getting *coughcough* _horny_ , he immediately was paranoid that his doctor was somehow slipping viagra or something in his prescription. After all they had found it so strange that he claimed to have never experienced sexual attraction/libido/anything. When really it could have been anything from the phase of puberty he was in, to a change in his hormones for other reasons. It wasn't a conspiracy at all. But it was easy enough to ignore it. It wasn't that strong an urge.
> 
> Then he came to Samwell and he was going through a bit of emotional upheaval with moving and in that week ...something happened. And ever since he has been obsessing and getting drunk when he thinks getting drunk might be helpful in avoiding that something (or someone?). Because he is supposed to be asexual. That's what he thought. He knew that he had experienced romantic attraction to all sorts of people before, and he's aware that it's possible to have a physical thing with someone and enjoy sex even without being sexually attracted to them. But he's asexual and that was a label he was okay with. Until suddenly it didn't seem to work any more, and it became like every other label he's ever had. Insufficient.
> 
> In this chapter, anyway, he and Chris talk a bit about him struggling with that. Unfortunately Chris has not a lot of advice because he has no idea what it's like to be ace.
> 
> Also, I'm trying to be vague about what Dex is going through for spoiler reasons but there's more than one anxiety disorder giving him grief here.
> 
> Up next: the game and winter screw!


	10. Winter Screw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter screw finally arrives

It was just before the third period that Nursey let slip that Caitlin was in the crowd. Chris was pulled out of his focused juice-box-sipping to blink at him.

“What?”

“Uh… Yeah, she's there. With a couple of her friends. I didn’t mean to— We didn't want to mess up your game.”

Chris looked around. It didn’t appear to be news to anyone else, but then Chris was the only one who became so tunnel visioned between the posts that he saw nothing but the puck, and the game so far had been a frustrating one for him. There must have been at least twenty-five shots on goal already. He hadn’t had time to let his focus slip, whereas even Jack was used, as captain, to observing everything else that was going on in a game.

“What's the score?” Chris asked. He had let two in so far, but as for how many the other side had conceded, he had no idea.

Everyone else exchanged a look.

“Don't think about the score,” Jack told him, which Chris translated to meaning they were losing. He groaned.

“It's fine, C. We've still got this period,” Nursey said.

“Right. Another period.” He leaned his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes to try and find his zone again.

* * *

They lost.

The final score was 1-2. Chris had been furiously blocking every shot that came near him for the whole of the last period, but nothing he did helped the fact that the opposition’s offense had brought their all to the game, and even Jack was struggling to get his stick on the puck.  It was with weariness and a feeling of failure that Chris retreated to the locker room.

“It’s not your fault,” Nursey told him, then added to Dex, “Or yours. They were just stronger than us today.”

Dex grunted his disbelief, and headed straight for the showers. Chris went to sit down, as he always did after a game, feigning the need to rest a little before his shower, so as not to have to share the space. Nursey followed him.

“Seriously, it’s—”

“I’m okay, Nursey.”

He sank to the floor by Chris’s feet, nodding. “Do you want me to go and shower now? So you can have some privacy?”

“You’re okay.” Chris noticed that Nursey looked relieved, so he added, “Do you think Dex is trying to drown himself?”

“I don’t want to go and find out.”

Most of the rest of the team were trying to crowd into the showers by then, anyway, so at least they didn’t have to worry about keeping an eye on him. Chris started to peel off his pads and armor.

“Chowder, you’ve got a visitor,” Lardo called, as she walked into the locker room without any concern about the half-naked hockey players. Chris knocked his knee against Nursey’s shoulder in his haste to pull his leg pads off so that he could get up.

“I don’t know why I have the reputation as the clumsy one,” Nursey grumbled.

Chris was aware that he didn’t look his best. His hair was flat and messed up from his helmet, there was a layer of sweat all over his body, and his socks were wet from the locker room floor post-ice. It was hard to be completely enthusiastic after a loss in a difficult game, but a smile still spread across his face when he saw Caitlin.

“I’m sorry,” she said, immediately. “That was a really rough game.”

Chris shook his head. “It didn’t get violent at least. I’m sorry in advance if I fall asleep on you tonight?”

She laughed and held her arms out for a hug, which Chris moved into as if there was nothing more natural in the world.

“It’s fine,” she told him. “We totally don’t have to stay that late. Whenever you’ve had enough.”

Chris pulled back. “I’ll come and pick you up in an hour? I have to shower and my stuffs back at my dorm. I wasn’t expecting—”

“Yeah, no, that’s fine. I’ll see you in a bit.”

She hesitated before stepping back, and even after she had turned to rejoin the two girls waiting for her at the end of the corridor, Chris stayed in the doorway to the locker room watching her, waving when she looked back at him coyly. Nursey almost had a coughing fit trying to get his attention when the showers were free.

* * *

Chris was outside Caitlin’s dorm seven minutes early, tugging nervously on the teal tie around his neck. After so much texting, it was hard for him to believe that this was actually their first date. The more he thought about that, the more anxious he felt about the evening. By now, his crush had grown to the sort of size that he would take it hard if Caitlin only saw this as a dance, and that after they would just be friends or even worse people who used to talk for a bit. They hadn't even kissed and their texts meant everything to him.

After a few minutes of psyching himself up, Chris finally texted to let Caitlin know that he was outside. The time it took for her to come outside only made him feel more tense, but when she saw him, she smiled, and that helped him relax a little. She wore a pink dress and silver kitten heels which showed off long, muscled legs.

“Hi,” Chris breathed. “You look great.”

“Thanks. So do you.” She gave his tie a tweak, as if to emphasize her point, and then dropped her hand down to entwine with his. “How are you feeling? From the game?”

“I’m okay. I’m disappointed, but they were really good! It’s just amazing to think we’re in the same division as them.”

“You stopped a lot of goals. You were really great.”

Chris squeezed her hand in response.

* * *

The moment they got to Winter Screw, Caitlin pulled Chris to the dance-floor, and they stayed there for four songs until she said she wanted a rest and they went to find somewhere to sit down. They found Holster and Ransom sat with their dates as well as the two volleyball girls who had come to the game.

“This is March and April,” Caitlin told Chris, as they sat down. “March is from Cali, too.”

“Right. You were there when we met,” Chris said, turning his attention to the girl, who grinned brightly at him - a stark comparison to April’s bored eyeroll.

“I have to be there for every important event in Cait’s life,” March told him.

Caitlin smiled and nudged Chris so that he was looking at her when she explained, “March is the one who got me into volleyball. She knew my step-sister in middle school.”

Chris nodded. “That’s a bit like Nursey and Shitty on our team. They were both at the same high school, and that’s why Nursey chose here.”

“Oh, no, I set my heart on Samwell when I was twelve,” Caitlin said with a shrug. “It didn’t matter to me that March was already here.”

“Shut up!” March said, nudging her.

“It’s the truth!”

“Did your parents come here too?” Chris asked, his voice going high in excitement. He winced when he heard it, and tried to calm himself down. He also had to pointedly avoid Ransom and Holster’s smirks.

“No, but my momma always said this is where she’d go if she’d gone anywhere. She visited once, with a friend. Dad went to UCLA, and I applied there to appease him, but I knew I didn’t really want to go.”

The song changed, and Chris and Caitlin were reminded of their company by loud groans from both Holster and April.

“Fffffuck Meghan Trainor,” Holster said emphatically.

“Too right,” agreed Nursey, as he took up the seat next to Chris. “Apparently my date doesn’t agree,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of where Stuart from Chris and Dex’s coding class was grinding against a guy who looked a little underdressed for the occasion.

Chris winced. It was mostly down to him that Dex had asked Stuart in the first place. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Chill, C, it’s fine. I just want to hang with my bros, you know?”

“Where’s Dex?” Ransom asked.

“He was introducing Angie to TiVo,” Nursey said with a shrug. “I don’t know where he went after that.”

“Oh hell no,” Holster said, looking across the dance floor. Chris craned his neck to look. It took him a moment to look beyond the sight of Dex’s tiny date dancing with the giant that was sophomore defenseman Aarón Ritvo, but when he did, he could see Bitty moving to the beat of All About That Bass, and the back of Dex’s head, a little more awkward in his steps, but dancing all the same.

“No, this isn’t okay. They can’t— I’ll be right back,” Holster said, getting up abruptly.

“Why don’t we go and get a soda or something?” Caitlin suggested to Chris, and the two headed for the bar, eager to avoid getting caught up in a confrontation.

“How is this sort of thing for you?” Chris asked as they leaned against the bar. “Like… is it hard on your ears?”

“A bit, but not much more it would be for most people, I don’t think. It’s not like with hearing aids where they amplify the sound.” Chris nodded. That much he had worked out from Wikipedia. “It gets uncomfortable to wear them all day if I’m constantly in noisy places, but taking them out for your game means I’m okay at the moment. It’s weird if I can’t hear what songs are playing, and I’m actually at an advantage when it comes to knowing what people are saying when it’s too loud to hear over the music.”

They took their drinks and walked along the edge of the dance floor, but they drank fast out of thirst and by the next song they were dancing again. They sang at the top of their voices to Taylor Swift and danced themselves sore to American Authors. They got split up briefly, getting caught up in dances with their teammates, gravitated back together, and then were split up again when _Bang Bang_ came on. Chris laughed until he couldn’t breathe at the sight of Holster and Shitty having a dance-off, and again when a startled Jack was pushed into the middle of the circle that had formed and told to dance. When Dex pointed gun fingers at Ransom during the chorus, Ransom grabbed onto them, and leaned in to talk into his ear, both of them still moving their hips in time to the music. Then, Nursey pushed away suddenly, disappearing in the direction of the toilets, and Chris turned to figure out what was going on, but he could neither see Nursey nor, any more, Caitlin. He slipped away from the hockey team to search for her, finally seeing her dancing with March and April, though she took a step back and let them grind against each other the moment she saw Chris.

Rather than push through the crowd towards her, he pointed at the bar, and Caitlin responded with a thumbs up, and a point at a free table not far away. As soon as he approached the bar, he was bombarded by chirps from some of the upperclassmen from the team. Mortara insisted on buying him and Caitlin drinks, and Wagner started giving him tips about slow dancing, and walking her home. Chris smirked and looked away. They talked as if he had never had a girlfriend before. Perhaps they thought that was the case, but it was amusing to him all the same.

When he sought out Caitlin at the table she had indicated before, he was surprised to see that she was talking to Dex. So far, he hadn’t actually had a chance to introduce the two of them, seeing as how he and Caitlin had arrived separately to the SMH team and his path hadn’t crossed with Dex’s until just now, after he had lost Caitlin to the crowd. As he watched, Dex’s hand moved in a strange way which Chris thought was sign language, and then they seemed to wrap their conversation up. Caitlin stood up and patted Dex’s cheek before she walked over to Chris.

“You were talking to Dex?” Chris said, his voice inflecting as if it were a question.

“Will? Yeah. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Chris hummed questioningly, but Caitlin had put her arm around his neck and her lips against his ear, which was incredibly distracting. “I really love this song,” she told him.

Chris held her drink out for her and when she had taken it, he steered her backwards to the dance floor. It was a slower song than any of the others they had danced to, and the lyrics were too strong for a first date, but Chris wound his free arm around Caitlin’s waist and pulled her close so that they could sway together. They attempted to hide blushes with sips of drink, until there wasn’t anything left to distract themselves with, and then with empty cups stacked inside each other and hanging from the end of Chris’s finger, they wrapped themselves up in each other some more, and lost themselves in the moment.

Their foreheads had pressed together, noses nudging each other occasionally, when Chris had the urge to yawn. He lifted his head up, and clamped his lips together in an attempt to stifle it, but Caitlin still noticed.

“You’re tired,” she commented in a soft voice.

“Yeah, but I’m not ready for tonight to end.”

Her nose crinkled in amusement. “Come on, let’s go. You played a hockey game this evening, and I want to get these off.” She tapped the device hooked behind her right ear.

Chris couldn’t argue with that, so even though he didn’t like the thought of leaving early and missing out on something, or feeling like he might be making Caitlin miss out, he tangled his fingers with hers and they made for the exit. They paused in the doorway long enough for Caitlin to force her umbrella out of her bag, and for her to decline Chris’s offer of his jacket to put over her head, and then they were walking under the beat of rain back to the dorms.

“I’m glad neither of us live in one of the frat houses this year,” Caitlin said. Chris agreed. Winter Screw’s venue was the other side of South Quad, and the dorms were a lot closer than the Haus, or any of its neighboring homes. As it was, they were outside Chris’s building within a matter of minutes, but he bypassed it and kept on going to Caitlin’s, which was another block further. There, she led him up the stairs until they reached her door, and there she stopped.

“I’d let you in, but I think my roommate’s there, so I don’t want to turn on the light.”

“No, that’s okay.”

She smiled at him, and let her hand slip from his grip, only to place it on his neck. Chris’s fingers ran along the wet chiffon of her dress, and then her lips were on his, and they were holding each other close.

“Thanks for tonight,” Chris said, when they had broken apart.

“Thank  _ you. _ ”

The way they grinned at each other was soppy and silly, and it made Chris want to kiss her again, but instead he said, “I don’t have any finals on Wednesday. If you wanted to do anything.”

“I do, Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday morning, but I’m free Tuesday afternoon and evening.”

Chris thought about it for a moment. “I have this hockey team profile thing with the Daily Tuesday afternoon, but we could meet up after that.”

“Okay! Okay.”

“I’ll text you.”

“Great!”

They let their arms drop from around each other and Chris took a step back as Caitlin rooted in her bag for her key. She looked at him again when she had slid it into the lock.

“Goodnight, Chris.”

“Yeah, I—” Chris bit on his lip, then closed the gap again, lips brushing against hers just briefly. “Goodnight.”

There was something beautiful about the deep shade of crimson she turned as she grinned again.


	11. Epikegster 2k14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finals week arrives. Meanwhile, Chris and Caitlin navigate the early stages of dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger//Content warnings:  
> \- Coral Reef  
> \- Coming out (willingly, and it all goes well)  
> \- Mention of death / parental loss / cancer  
> \- Alcohol use & drunken kisses
> 
> (I accidentally made this live when I just meant to save it so pleeeease lemme know about any errors and be nice ooops)

Monday saw the start of finals and the many stresses of the hockey team. Jack spent the hour between his and Bitty’s checking clinic and morning practice in the library and showed up laden down with books. For once, he wasn’t the first person into the locker room. As they headed towards the ice, Holster was chirping Bitty about his plans to go for coffee with his Winter Screw date later instead of studying.

“I can’t be studying all the time, Holster. One break won’t hurt.”

“The problem is when it’s not just one break,” Jack muttered.

“Coffee will warm me up now that the weather has turned so frigid,” Bitty added, as if Jack hadn’t said anything.

“It’s not that cold.”

“ _ You’re  _ Canadian, you don’t get any say in—”

“It’s not that cold, Bits,” Wicky cut in.

Bitty gasped as if he had been betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side! You’re from a literal desert! And aren’t you part Hawaiian?”

“Ch’yeah but remember that blizzard last year?”

Bitty tutted and turned to Chris. “Back me up here, Chowder. It’s cold.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty cold, but it  _ is  _ December,” Chris stuttered.

While Bitty looked satisfied, Chris was saved the chirping from the rest of his teammates by the coaches calling practice to a start.

They were uncharacteristically quiet over team breakfast, most of them in a rush to either get to exams or get back to studying. Chris propped his notes up against a carton of water to read as he shovelled omelet and bacon in his mouth. Nursey’s notes were spread haphazardly across the table and he had already spilled coffee over half of them. Dex, meanwhile, hadn’t touched his bag since sitting down, and was focused only on his cereal, until an alarm went off on his phone.

“We need to go,” he said, once the alarm was silenced.

“Did you actually set an alarm for leaving breakfast?” Nursey asked.

Dex nodded, a blank expression on his face, as if the answer were obvious.

“You’re such a dork.”

“What? We have finals!”

“We’re not going to be late. We’ve never been late when we’re leaving breakfast for actual classes. We have an extra half hour!”

Chris followed them, notes still in hand, and let their bickering fade into white noise.

* * *

After his exam, Chris headed straight for the library. A text from Bitty promised that there would be a packed lunch waiting for him there, and it was easy enough to follow the noise which indicated the hockey team’s presence, even if they were quieter than they could be. He walked up just to hear the tail-end of Dex saying, “—we help?”

“No,” Holster said sternly. Chris looked around to try and figure out what they were talking about.

“What’s going on? Where’s Ransom?”

“Right, so Rans is in a bit of a state right now.” Holster said, his booming voice getting louder as he inflected the statement into a anxious-toned question. “Just leave him alone? We’re all going to be fine.”

The last sentence seemed to be directed below the desk, so Chris tilted his head to look. There, he could see Ransom curled up in a ball and shaking.

“Oh, are—”

“Chowder!” Holster shouted. Chris jerked back up to look at him. “Don’t talk to him!”

“I won’t!”

“Chowder. I’m serious!”

Chris backed away from the table, repeating that he wouldn’t try to talk to him, and bumped into Nursey who had just arrived. Nursey swung his bag onto the table and looked over the situation.

“Wow, Rans needs to chill,” he said.

“Yeah, nope, don’t want to hear it right now, Nurse,” Holster said, talking across him. There was still a frantic edge to his voice, and they were getting some looks from other people nearby. Nursey looked taken aback, and the moment he opened his mouth to respond, Holster interrupted him again. “Ransom is a very delicate ecosystem. He has to do this every semester to balance out the hockey bro, frat star and science nerd into a perfect 4.0. He’s a coral reef. Don’t touch him. Sit over there and study.” With that, Holster opened a bottle of water and passed it under the table, then returned to his own notes. Chris exchanged a look with his fellow frogs, and they retreated to the other end of the table, where Bitty handed over their lunches.

“Is that… Normal?” Dex asked, glancing at Bitty and jerking his head in Holster’s direction. His expression was such a mix of emotions that Chris couldn’t tell if he was more concerned, curious, or amused.

“Ransom? I’m not sure normal’s the word, but he’ll be okay. This happens every time finals come round.”

“That’s so not healthy,” Dex said. His nose was screwed up, and his lips tense as if he was trying hard not to laugh.

“Bro. Not chill,” Nursey told him.

Dex rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Nurse? You think it’s just okay that he’s curled up under the desk?”

“Shut it, Poindexter!” Holster called from the other end of the table.

* * *

 

The next day, Chris went from his exam to the Haus. He wished he had time to go over the exam with the rest of his friends from his Mandarin class, because he felt pretty disheartened by how difficult he had found it, but he had an interview with the Daily, and wanted to check with Bitty that he looked okay before he went to Faber.

“I mean, if they want me to skate around, I can’t wear anything too impractical, can I?” he said. He pulled self-consciously on his Pavelski jersey when Bitty looked him over. They had told him that he need not bother with pads and gear, but rather wear whatever he wanted to.

“Of course not, but don’t you want to wear a Samwell top?”

“Huh.” It had not occurred to Chris not to wear Sharks merchandise. “I don’t think I have time to go back to my dorm?”

Bitty hummed. “You could borrow Jack’s hoodie. He doesn’t have his name on it.” His cheeks coloured and Chris wondered if he must be getting a little warm, seeing as how he had clearly been stress baking all morning (or perhaps it was procrastination).

“Oh, uh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to just take it. He’s not even here.”

“It’ll be fine, Chowder,” Bitty assured him. Then, he slid a tray of shortbread batter into the oven, set the timer, and went upstairs. He returned a moment later with a hoodie over his arm. Chris pulled it on and while it was a little baggy him, it wasn’t obvious that it was someone else’s. At least it covered the bottom of the Sharks jersey, and the arms were the right length. 

“How do I look?”

“Great!” Bitty smiled at him. Chris crouched down to look at his reflection in the oven. He ran a hand through his bangs, and then bared his teeth at himself to make sure there was nothing stuck in his braces. He winced as they rubbed across a fresh mouth ulcer.

“Aw, man, I hate my braces,” he said, standing up. First his student ID, and now the athlete profile for the Daily would immortalise him wearing braces in full print colour for the next four years. He was doomed to be known as the college hockey player with a metal mouth.

He walked to Faber, his tongue rubbing over the ulcer, and trying to push his lower lip out so that it wouldn’t keep catching on his braces.

He rearranged his face into a smile just before pushing the doors of the rink open. With a wave to Abbie who was working on reception, he headed for the lounge where he had agreed to meet the crew from the Daily.

“You must be Chris,” said a young woman with dark red ringlets. “I’m Jodie. Thanks again for meeting us, and we're sorry it ended up being during finals.” She stood to shake his hand, and when they had let go he shoved his hands awkwardly into the pocket of Jack’s hoodie.

“Uh, how does this work?”

“We've got a couple of standard questions we put on all the profiles, and then we'll get a picture of you on the ice. It shouldn’t take too long.”

Chris nodded and sat down opposite her, his eyes darting between her and the sophomore holding the camera.

“Just look at me. Ignore the cameras,” Jodie told him.

There was only one camera, but Chris supposed that was just what people said.

Most of the questions were easy — name, birthday, home town, favorite team — while others were a little more difficult — what his favorite sport was besides hockey (he finally decided on soccer over basketball), what he thought his major might be (he has no idea; maybe his exam results would give him some ideas), what he would eat if he could only eat only one thing ever again (key lime pie, with an add on that he missed his father’s cooking).

Then, he led them out to the ice, and showed them where they could film from. He pulled on his skates and did a couple of laps before stopping in front of them. Jodie handed him a stick, which he frowned at for a moment.

“I don't really— Uh, I’m a goalie, so I— You said not to bring my pads?”

That seemed to throw them, which Chris understood. Dex and Nursey had both already done their profiles, and all they had done was skate around a bit in jeans, posing with a hockey stick.

“I can do the splits?” he suggested. A couple of them nodded, and Chris skated around some, turning to and fro and getting his edges right before he dropped down, slower than he sometimes would because of the lack of protection over his knees. They all erupted into applause, and Chris couldn't help but feel as if he had, at least, passed one test this week.

* * *

Chris met Caitlin at Jerry’s afterwards, and told her all about the interview over a late lunch. In turn, she gave him a run down of how her exams were going, and they talked about how strange it was to think that even her post-season volleyball matches were over now, while hockey was only getting going. Somehow, talk turned to high school. Caitlin explained that she had played peewee softball, but when she moved in with her dad she switched to volleyball because of the sports available at her new school. Chris told her about how his parents had met at college, married in Boston and both decided to do post-grad at Samwell when he and his sister were little, and then how he had learned to skate at Samwell, and it was all he wanted to do when they moved to California.

“So you’re a New Englander, really,” Caitlin said. Her nose crinkled in amusement.

“I guess? I don’t remember much of being up here, though! But I guess that’s part of why I wanted to come to school here.”

She nodded. “Same. Well, I never lived here, but my mom talked about it, and we came down to Boston a few times when we were visiting the Poindexters.”

It took a moment for her words to register, and even longer for Chris to start trying to make sense of them. He frowned into his coffee as he replayed the sentence over and over. “What?”

When he got no response, he looked up to see Caitlin looking as confused as he felt. “What?” she repeated.

“The Poindexters… As in  _ Dex?” _

“Well… yeah.” They stared at each other for a moment, until finally Caitlin’s eyes widened in realization. “He didn’t tell you, did he?”

Dex had never really told Chris much of anything about life outside of Samwell, now that Chris thought about it. All he knew was that he had moved around a bit within Maine, that he had a brother, and that they were tight for money. He shook his head.

“I thought he would have told you,” Caitlin said. “When he came up to me at Screw, he already  _ knew  _ I was here, so I thought— It doesn’t matter. We’re cousins. Will and I. It was always a long way, though. They could never make the journey often, and after my mom passed away—” Her teeth buried into her lip and her eyes dropped down to her lap.

“Shit. I’m so sorry. That’s—” Chris started to reach across the table to her, but it didn’t feel close enough, so he moved around to her side of the booth and wrapped an arm around her.

“I’m okay,” she said, but she hugged him tightly all the same. She repeated herself once they had separated, in a tone which suggested that she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Are you sure you don't want to—”

“I’m  _ okay _ . It was seven years ago. Breast cancer. I just— it's hard to talk about it in the context of Will’s family, too.”

Chris bit his lip. It was hard to get his head around the idea. “Yeah… cousins, huh?” It made sense now that he started to think about it. He remembered Dex’s comment about going to Los Angeles as a child, and of course there had been the two of them knowing each other at Winter Screw. He tried to see Dex in Caitlin, but without them next to each other to compare, he couldn’t get further than them both having narrow chins.

“It’s a small world,” Caitlin said. “He’s— I should probably say, there’s some things that if he hasn’t told you it’s because he’s not ready for you to know, so I probably shouldn’t—”

Chris nodded. “No, I get it. He’s not opened up to anyone at Samwell about anything, as far as I know. Not about family stuff.”

“Makes sense.”

Chris supposed he would have to understand the full story before it really would make sense to him, but he didn’t push. Instead, he changed the subject, and before long they were chatting about television shows, with an ease Chris had never felt with anyone else at this stage of dating.

They were comparing theories about the next season of Orphan Black when they left Jerry’s, fingers tangled together, and once they had exhausted that conversation, they fell into an easy silence. They were walking without any particular direction, occasionally pointing out an interesting looking cloud, or a fight between a couple of geese, or how there was one tree on Lake Quad that somehow still had its leaves.

It was strange to think that this was only their second date. It felt as if they had been together for so much longer. Chris certainly liked her enough. There was still so much they didn’t know about each other, though. Chris had only just learned that one of his best friends was her cousin. It had taken him a week to find out that she had been born Deaf, and his biggest secret was still hidden from her. It was how these things sometimes happened, he knew. People didn’t like to open themselves completely up straight away, and he was very much a culprit of that. A lot of their relationship building so far had been via text, except for a couple of walks home, a night in a loud danceroom, and today. There was still a long way to go before they would know as much as there was to know about each other.

At least there was something Chris could do to help that along the way, now. He pulled his hand gently away from hers, so that he could wipe them nervously on his hoodie. He then remembered that it was actually Jack’s hoodie, and worried for a moment about what Jack would think about him wiping sweat all over it. He looked up to see Caitlin watching him in concern.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I was just thinking— I mean, you’ve told me a lot about yourself now, and I know we’ve only just started, uh, dating, but I want to be open and honest with you. And I guess it’s something you need to know anyway if we’re going to carry on with this? But I’m not very good at doing this, and I’ve never had to do it with someone I was interested in before, because they all already  _ knew,  _ and anyway I think—”

“Hey, Chris. Breathe. It’s okay. What is it?”

He took a couple of breaths, and stood facing her, trying to take comfort from her expression of reassurance, openness and slight confusion. “I’m trans. I was born, uh, looking like a girl, but I’ve been on hormones nearly four years now, and I had surgery last year. Top surgery. And um… Some… bottom… uh.”

She smiled at him and took his hand again. “You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable sharing. Not now, anyway. If we— I mean, it’s only the second date, right?” She blushed to an incredibly dark magenta. Chris was sure his own cheeks were pink, too.

“Uh, yeah. So, uh, you’re okay with… that?”

“I like you. Why would this change that?” She shook her head before he could answer. “I know, there’s some people who would be bothered by it, but it doesn’t change who you are to me. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do, or that I shouldn’t do. What do you prefer to be called?”

“Chris is fine. I’ve never— It’s the short of my birth name, and it was always easier just to keep that. A couple of people here have assumed it’s short for Christopher and I actually— at first it was weird but I like it now, when that happens. A bit like my hockey nickname. Um. He/his pronouns, too.”

“Okay. So.  _ Christopher.  _ Who else knows?”

The way the name rolled off her tongue made Chris grin. When he glanced over at her, she was smiling back. “Everyone back in California, because they obviously knew me before I transitioned. At Samwell, though, not really— Dex doesn’t know. It’s just Nursey, Shitty, Lardo and Bitty.”

She nodded. She probably had no idea who most of those people were.

“Uh, Nursey’s the one who came with me to your last game. He’s Dex’s roommate, and probably my best friend here. Or— I don’t know. I don’t want to choose between the two of them, but, well, I  _ did  _ tell Nursey, and not Dex. Or, Nursey saw my scars and— Well, anyway. Lardo’s our team manager. Oh, the coaches know too, of course, and some of the other faculty staff. Uh, Shitty’s the one with the moustache? And Bitty’s the smaller blond one. He’s great.”

“Okay. Cool. You don’t have to worry about me telling anybody. You can trust me. Or, I guess you already did, so thank-you for that.”

“I— Yeah. Hey, do you want to come round to mine for a bit. Not to— Not because— Like you say, it’s only the second date, but just that it’s a bit cold an we could hang out there for a bit and—”

“Okay! My roommate’s probably home. Her exam was finishing about three, and she’s been pretty tense the past few days so I don’t want to disturb her, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, Ransom’s like that. One of the juniors on the team. He was under the table in the library yesterday.”

Caitlin frowned. “Drunk?”

“Oh, uh, no? I don’t think so? I think that’s just how he is when he gets really stressed out.”

“What about the rest of your team?”

The description of each his teammates took them to the entrance to his building, and by the time he had heard about the volleyball team, they were sat on his bed.

“What will you do now that volleyball season’s over?” Chris asked, his eyes focused on their entwined hands.

Caitlin shrugged. “Schoolwork. We’ll have a couple of games in Spring, and we still have practice, just not as intense. Honestly, I don’t know how you manage having your season overlapping so much with work. This week would have killed me if I was still having to get up for practice three of the mornings.”

“It’s okay when Dex and Nursey aren’t yelling at each other. Roadies can be good for getting work done.”

She snickered. At some point they had laid down. A tingle went down Chris’s spine at how close they were. “You’ll have to let me know if I’m taking up too much of your time.”

“I think you’ll be okay.”

“You might get sick of me.”

Chris just shook his head, and pressed closer. Her eyes fluttered shut, and his followed just before their lips connected.

* * *

That evening, Chris and Dex were using the computers in the computer science building to study, while Nursey sat on the floor between them scribbling notes in the margin of his poetry anthology.

“Dex?” Chris asked, when he had finished two sets of problems.

“I’m still on the other set. Check the booklet.”

“No, not that. I was just wondering—” He chewed on his lip. Dex looked up at him. “Why didn’t you tell me Caitlin’s your cousin?”

Nursey lifted his head from his book, now, too. Dex shrugged and looked back at the computer screen.

“Dex—”

“It’s just weird okay?”

“That I’m dating her? Do you not want me to?” He wanted to be able to say that he would end things with Caitlin if it made Dex uncomfortable, but there was a hurt and disappointment which crept into his voice, betraying how little he really wanted to do that.

“No, not  _ that.  _ That’s okay. That’s— I wouldn’t be able to think of anyone better for either of you. I just haven’t seen her since I was eleven. That’s what’s weird about it. I have to finish these problems.”

As Dex turned back to frown resolutely at his screen, Chris thought about what Caitlin had told him; about how there were parts of Dex’s homelife which it made sense he might not have opened up about yet, and how Chris not knowing probably meant that Dex wasn’t ready. So, he bit back a slew of questions. Instead, he turned back to his own work, flipping his booklet to the next page so that he could start on the next set of problems. Nursey nudged his leg, and he glanced down.

“Did you only find out today?”

Chris nodded, then frowned. “Did you already know?”

“Uh, yeah. After Winter Screw.”

“What?”

“I thought Dex was trying to wheel your girl. He told me then.”

Dex made a tutting noise, but otherwise acted as if he wasn’t listening to their conversation. Chris stared at Nursey incredulously.

“You… defended my honor?”

“Ch’yeah. Of course, bro.”

Nursey shrugged and looked back down at his book. Chris rolled his eyes to the ceiling. It was so typical of them to have a fight over this, without either of them thinking to let Chris know afterwards of the situation. He hadn’t suspected Dex of flirting with his date, but there still could have been a risk of him making the same mistake. “You two are so ridiculous.”

“You love us, man.”

“You’re  _ ridiculous.” _

* * *

The week passed quicker than Chris expected it to. His exams were tougher than they had ever been at high school, and though he had more time to complete them in, he still found himself hard-pressed to finish. His evenings comprised of heavy studying, interspersed with kisses the night he studied with Caitlin instead of the hockey team. High tension remained all around, with Dex snapping at Nursey over dinner for mentioning singing, Shitty barely being heard from for the entire week, and Bitty abruptly ending things with his Winter Screw date on Thursday (right before he started talking about throwing out the green couch, as well). It only followed, therefore, that when Chris turned his phone back on after his last exam, he was greeted by a Facebook invitation to Epikegster 2k14. They all needed to blow off some steam. Chris scrolled the invited list enough to check that the volleyball girls were on there, and then marked himself as going.

It was as if the whole of Samwell descended on the Haus the next evening. How so many people could fit on the first floor, Chris had no idea, and many more besides filled up the front yard, and spilled onto the road. After only forty minutes, the den was so packed it was impossible to move without grinding against at least three other people, and Chris was most of the way to drunk. Despite never having felt short before, surrounded by athletes he had to stand up on tiptoes to see over the crowd. Caitlin ended a conversation with someone from Boston college as Chris finally pushed his way through the crowd to her.

“To the end of exams,” he said, knocking his cup against hers.

“I don't have anything left in here, or I'd drink to that. I guess— Maybe I'll just have to—” S he pulled him in for a kiss, and he could taste the tub juice on her lips.

“You drunk already?”

She giggled, and pushed an empty cup into his hand. “Of course not. Get me another one?”

Chris stole another kiss, and wandered over towards the kitchen. A hand fell on his shoulder, and an excited Nursey leaned in to him. “C! C, I was crowd-surfing and I saw—”

“Oh my God, Nursey, it wasn’t him,” Dex said, appearing on Chris’s other side.

“I swear it was. Kent Parson!”

“Oh my fucking God, that’s fucking Kent Parson!” someone else shouted nearby.

Chris span around, to look. Of course Kent had played in the Q with Jack, and he would be playing Boston the next day, but he wouldn’t really come to a college party, would he? Somebody must have simply been mistaken for him.

“I’m telling you,” Dex said as they pushed through the crowd in pursuit of answers. “It wasn’t—”

Chris let out a gasp when his eyes fell on the Ace’s snap-back.

“It’s just someone who looks like him,” Dex tried again, but Chris and Nursey pushed him backwards until they were closer.

“Rans, bro!” Holster was laughing from behind them. “When you said you’d tweeted him—”

“Shit, I didn’t think he’d actually show!” Ransom replied. “Fucking  _ Parse _ . At  _ our  _ kegster.”

“Okay, let’s just be chill,” Nursey said, hand on Chris’s shoulder to stop him interrupting Kent from talking to Jack.

Dex rolled his eyes. “Right, because you’re being so chill right now, Nurse.”

They watched as another student pounced, asking Parse to sign something. Chris found himself frowning. When had Jack slipped away? Before he could turn and ask one of his friends, Ransom and Holster were moving forwards, greeting Parse with fistbumps and bro-hugs.

“Oluransi! Thanks for the tweet, man.”

“Yeah! Uh, I’m Ransom, and this is Holster. D-men.”

“Sure! I remember you two from last time. Econ major, right?” he said looking at Holster. “And… pre-med?”

Holster looked delighted. “Yeah!”

“Biology, but I’m doing my MCAT this year. These are our frogs. Nursey, Chowder and Dex. Nursey and Dex are d-men too, and Chowder’s the goalie. Where’ve Ollie and Wicky gone?” Ransom directed the last question towards Lardo, who shrugged.

“Wicky’s probably pissing himself somewhere,” Holster said. He turned to Kent. “He’s one of your lot. From Utah, really, rather than Nevada, but he picked Aces over Yotes or Avs.”

“He’s got good taste,” Parse said with a grin.

“Anyway, bro,” Ransom said. “Lardo, our team manager here, is reigning beer pong champion. What do you say, an NHL star like you breaking her winning streak?”

Chris was sure that Parse would balk at the thought of playing drinking games with a bunch of undergrads, but instead he smiled amicably and asked if he could play it without alcohol, because “I do have a game tomorrow, you know.”

Holster guided him over to the table. “Bro, while I would love to make you go against the Bruins hungover, we would never force anyone to drink.”

“She’ll still beat him!” Shitty yelled from across the room.

“Challenge accepted,” Parse muttered. He took the proffered ping pong ball from Ransom, and aimed his shot.

“We should go find Wicky,” Dex suggested, pulling on Chris’s arm.

“Bro, I can’t believe Kent Parson is here,” Nursey said as they weaved their way through the crowd. Chris twisted his head over his shoulder, still trying to watch the game.

“Oh! He just missed. And Lardo got it in again.”

“Of course she did. She’s Lardo.”

“Ransom and Holster just got a photo with him! Aw, man, do you think we won’t get a picture if we can’t find Wicky soon?”

“Yo, Dex, give me a leg up, I can see people better from on top of the crowd.”

“Fuck off, Nurse, you’re not crowd-surfing  _ again.” _

Nursey was halfway through a response when Chris saw Ollie. Wherever there was an Ollie, there would be a Wicky. Sure enough, they managed to get the attention of both of them, and dragged them back over to the pong table in time to see Shitty declare Lardo the winner.

“Good game,” Parse said, as he wrote something across the back of a flyer. He took a selfie with Lardo, holding up the sign which would let the Internet know he had been beaten, and then he was caught up in a chain of people demanding pictures.

Wicky was bright red as he got Parse to sign his shirt.

“Are you the one from Utah, then?” Parse asked.

Wicky stuttered out a response which vaguely mentioned Hilo and St George in a nonsensical jumble, as Ransom pushed the frogs forward.

“Chowder, you take it,” Dex said, as they crowded around Parse.

Chris took his phone out his pocket, all the while chattering non-stop to the Aces captain. “Nobody said you might be here! It’s so weird, because Jack like  _ barely ever  _ talks about you, so I forget sometimes that you’re friends, and now you’re here, like a  _ real person,  _ instead of a hockey player.”

“C, chill. Hockey players are real people.”

“You know what I mean, Nursey!”

Parse seemed untroubled by the conversation. “Last I checked I was a real person,” he joked.

“Chris, there you are! I thought you were getting me a— Oh my  _ God,  _ you’re Kent Parson!” Caitlin squealed. Chris lifted a hand to wave at her.

“I’m so sorry! I _was_ getting you a drink, but I got  _ really  _ sidetracked. Oops. I think I just took a picture.”

“It’s okay, I got one, but then I’d lost you. Oh, Chris. That’s a  _ terrible  _ picture.” She rested her head on his shoulder, leaning over to look at his phone.

“Bitty’s turn for a selfie with Parse!” Holster announced. Chris stepped away, alternating between apologizing to Dex for cutting him out the picture, and worrying to Caitlin about how he was pretty sure he had just made a fool of himself to Kent Parson.

March and April, from the volleyball team, crowded around them. “What’s going on?” asked March. “Everyone’s talking about some celebrity? But I didn’t recognize the name.”

Immediately, Ransom and Holster joined the conversation, and started reeling off Parse’s stats. This soon became a history lesson explaining the relationship with Jack and Parse, and though it was mostly stuff Chris had heard before, he stayed to listen. Behind him, Caitlin was talking to Dex about Christmas, and Nursey seemed to have disappeared again.

“Anyway,” Ransom concluded, quirking an eyebrow in March and April’s direction, “Holtzy and I are kind of hockey experts. We can literally tell you anything. We got a ton of stuff up in the attic.”

Chris was interested in what other information they could possibly have, so when March seemed up for going and looking at it, he was quick to agree. “Oh! Yeah! Let’s go to the attic!”

Someone pulled him away by his hood. He twisted to see Dex’s exasperated expression. “What?”

“They’re trying to wheel them. Don’t get in the middle.”

“But March and April—”

“Have an open relationship,” Caitlin supplied. “Hey, um. If they’re going to hook-up, I think— One dance with you, then I’ll head off? There’s just so many people, and I'm pretty wiped.”

They didn’t even make it through a whole song before Chris was pressing Caitlin against the wall, their noses bumping against each other as their lips tangled together.

“We should go,” Chris mumbled.

“Hm. Yeah,” Caitlin agreed, but she pulled his jaw back to hers. They both started giggling at the same time, their foreheads clashing as they did. “Okay, let’s go,” she laughed. Her lips caught his again, on their way out.

They went back to Chris’s, where he gave her a jersey and some sweatpants to borrow, checked for a ninth time if she was sure she didn’t want him to walk her back to her own dorm, and then they fell into bed, toothpaste replacing the taste of alcohol on each other’s lips and limbs all a tangle until, exhausted, they rolled back-to-back and settled into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack is never getting that hoodie back. I see two possibilities. The first: Chris keeps it forever and passes it onto his children who sell it on ebay for a fortune. The second: Bitty 'rescues' it next year when Chris is living in the Haus, but Jack still doesn't get it back.
> 
> Up Next: Back to California


	12. Los Angeles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris goes back to California for winter break, and some relationships have a chance to grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> \- transphobia (in the airport scene)  
> \- discussion about dead name use and nicknames  
> \- discussion of ableism/audism; emotional abuse stemming from this implied.  
> \- I know I never rated this, and this chapter doesn't get explicit, but we're getting closer to 'scenes of a sexual nature'
> 
> This chapter is like really long compared to others (we're talking 8k when my next longest is 5.5k)

Caitlin was still in his bed when Chris woke up the morning after Epikegster. He did his best to stretch without knocking her, pulled his top down where it had ridden up, and leaned across to get his phone. Eight o’clock. It was way too early for the amount of alcohol he had consumed the night before, and for the time they had fallen asleep, but at the same time he needed to get up now if he was going to get to Logan early enough to check into his flight. There was already a text from Bitty, checking he got back to his dorm safely.

> **Conversation: Bitty**  
>  _ Chris _  
>  I’m fine, thanks! I don’t think I’m going to make it to the Haus before we have to leave for the airport though! I haven’t done any packing!!
> 
> _ Bitty _  
>  Well your driver is still at the Haus. He fell asleep on the floor, poor thing.
> 
> _ Chris _  
>  Is he okay??!
> 
> _ Bitty _  
>  He says it’s nothing some coffee can’t fix

Chris squinted at the words, trying to work out if he really wanted Nursey driving him, even just as far as Logan, if he was that hungover. Dismissing the question as something to deal with later, and desperate for some water, he crawled to the foot of his bed, in the hope of climbing off the end without disturbing Caitlin, but she mumbled something.

“Go back to sleep,” Chris told her softly, as he stumbled to the cupboard he kept his water in. “Sorry,” he said to Caitlin, who was still sat up looking at him. “I mean it, you should just go back to sleep, or if you want me to take you back to your own dorm now that’s okay. Not that I don’t think you can walk yourself! Or… When’s your flight home?”

“I can’t hear you, Chris,” she told him, reaching a hand out to take a second bottle of water. “My head feels like it’s going to explode, so let’s just sit here for a bit until either it feels less like it’s going to explode or until I need to throw up, and then I’ll go back to my dorm and sort out the batteries for my implants.” She waved at the devices currently sat on Chris’s bedside table. Now he thought about it, he vaguely remembered her taking them out just before they went to sleep.

Caitlin left twenty minutes later, still in Chris's clothes by his insistence, her crop top and skirt rolled under her arm. After his shower, Chris piled clothes into a bag, suddenly aware of how little time he had until he had to leave for the airport. A text came through and he lunged for his phone in case it was Nursey.

> **Conversation: Caitlin**  
>  _ Caitlin _  
>  That feeling when you have like 5 minutes before your bus to the airport and haven’t left your dorm

Chris stared at the words for half a minute too long before replying.

> _ Chris _  
>  What time’s your flight?  
>  Are you going from Logan?  
>  Nursey’s taking me, he should have space in his car!
> 
> _ Caitlin _  
>  Flight’s 11.25 Logan-LAX  
>  Would that really be okay?  
>  I was just thinking I’ll have to get an Uber instead
> 
> _ Chris _  
>  No way!!!  
>  We’re on the same flight!!!  
>  I’ll call him.

“Chill, C,” Nursey said, as soon as he picked up. His voice was scratchy. “I told you before. We can leave here at half past nine and still get you there on time. The hour and a half suggestion is just a suggestion. You only need like an hour tops to get through security, and they probably won’t even pull you aside.”

“No, that’s not why I rang. Will there be space for Caitlin? She’s missed her bus.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. As long as neither of you have too much luggage. I’m taking Dex to the Amtrak station, too.”

“Oh. I thought his train wasn’t until this afternoon.”

“It’s not, but I told him what’s the point in him getting the shuttle when I’m driving into Boston this morning as it is. We can just chill there for a bit.”

“But there’s still room for Caitlin?”

“Sure thing, bro, you two can just get a bit cozy in the backseat. Not that that’s anything compared to what I saw last night.”

Chris felt his cheeks heat up. “Okay, I’m going to hang up now and finish getting ready. Please get here before quarter past.”

There was a throaty chuckle on the other end of the line. “See you in half an hour, lover boy. You can spare me the deets.”

“Nursey!” Chris squeaked out, and hit the end call button midway through Nursey’s responding laugh. He tapped out a quick text to Caitlin, and then pottered around his room, straightening everything out and making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything he might need.

At five past, Chris double checked that everything he might need through security was easily accessible in his backpack, then hitched it onto his shoulder and headed downstairs to wait. A couple of minutes later, he opened the door for Caitlin, so that they could wait in the warmth of the foyer until Nursey and Dex got there.

“I'm sorry about this morning,” she said, once they had settled onto one of the couches which had view of the street outside.

Chris frowned, and cast his mind around for what she might have to apologize for. “What for?”

She shrugged. “For not trying harder.”

Chris shook his head. “What did you need to try?”

She bit her lips and looked away, through the glass doors. “Never mind.”

Chris took a breath but Nursey’s Volkswagen Passat pulled up before he could figure out what the conversation was really about, let alone come up with a response. He stood up, lifting his bag onto his shoulder as the car parked, and Caitlin followed his lead when Nursey climbed out the front passenger seat to open the trunk. They squashed their bags in with the ones already taking up half the space.

“Are you too hungover to drive or something?” Chris asked as Nursey got back into the passenger seat and he and Caitlin slid into the back.

Nursey huffed. “Of course not.”

“Yes he is,” Dex countered. “And get your feet off the dashboard.”

“It's my fucking car!” Nursey said, but he put his feet down anyway as he grumbled, “Chill, Poindexter.”

Dex ignored him. He checked the mirrors and blind spots three times before pulling off. There was a silence as they drove out of Samwell. The lines between Dex’s eyebrows as he concentrated on the road defied anybody to distract him. Nursey alternated between staring out the window and massaging the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. Chris turned to Caitlin. She was frowning at the back of Dex’s head with a calculating expression on her face, but when she realized she was being watched, she smiled back at Chris, and reached out for his hand.

“I hate your car,” Dex announced, as a set of lights turned green.

“Then stop insisting on driving it you weirdo,” Nursey retorted.

“It turns itself off when you stop for like thirty seconds.”

“It helps the fuel economy. Let me drive.”

“You can't walk five meters without falling over your own feet when you're sober, Nurse. _ ” _

Caitlin cleared her throat before Nursey could argue back. “Has anyone got any plans for the holidays?”

“Maybe I'll go for a drive,” Nursey mumbled.

“Just usual family Christmas things,” Chris said. “I’m going to a lot of the Sharks games, too. I have to make the most of my season ticket, and it’s not like they play in Boston or Providence  _ that  _ often.”

“Are you going to the game in LA? We should go together!”

It took Chris a couple of seconds to connect that she was really suggesting that they meet up in California over the holidays. “Oh! Yeah. Really? You want to?”

“I’d want to go anyway, and I’ll never persuade my step-sister to go with me. I mean, if you didn’t want to I can ask around some of my friends, but—”

“No! I want to. I mean. If you really want to and wouldn’t prefer to just go with one of your friends, but—”

“Yo, C, chill,” Nursey interrupted from the front. He twisted in his seat to look at Caitlin. “He’ll go with you. He’ll pick you up at seven, and take you to dinner first.”

“I, uh, might have to check the time of the game, first,” Chris stuttered.

“That sounds great,” Caitlin said, squeezing her fingers around Chris’s. “How about you, Nursey? Any plans for the holidays?”

“Oh, uh, not really? My family don’t do Christmas. My sister will be home, though, so family stuff. We’re going to the Rangers game against the Caps, too.”

Dex’s shoulders tensed, but he said nothing. Nursey glanced at him warily, and Caitlin cleared her throat. “Um, what are you two going to do today in Boston, then?”

Chris scratched his lip. He didn’t particularly like the idea of spending the journey trying to tiptoe around Dex’s issues with money, or family, or whatever had just made the conversation awkward. He suspected it was the fact that all the rest of them were going to NHL games during their time away, but he couldn’t be certain. Dex didn’t relax from the topic change, and still remained silent, even though they were on I-93 now and it was plain sailing for a while.

Nursey shrugged. “Wander around a bit. Go to a park, or something. Find some lunch.”

“Are you going back home today?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged again. “I’m aiming to get home for dinner.”

“Where do you live?”

Chris glanced over, surprised even though logically there was no reason Caitlin would know anything about Nursey. It occurred to him that they had only met very briefly before, so it may have been a little forward of him to invite her to carpool with them.

“Manhattan.”

“You’re okay to drive all the way back to New York?”

“Ch’yeah. It’s not even four hours, Farmer, chill. It’s easier from Boston, anyway. Then I’m on the same roads as I was when I used to drive back from Andover. I know those roads like the back of my hand.”

“I meant if you’re too hungover to drive us to Boston.”

Nursey raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s fighting talk from someone who slept in enough to miss her bus.”

A dark flush spread from Caitlin’s cheeks to her ears. “I didn’t— I mean, it’s not that I was asleep just that I was still at—” Her eyes widened a little and she glanced over at Chris, the red of her face deepening even more.

Nursey grinned, turning back to face the front. “It’s okay. I’d rather not hear any more, and I’m sure Dex would agree.”

“Much as I don’t normally agree with him,” muttered Dex

“I’m sure Shitty would say that deets are a tradition of the SMH so we should demand them, but—” Nursey trailed off, screwing his nose up at the thought of hearing about someone else’s sex life.

“There are no deets,” Chris said, and he kicked the back of Nursey’s seat for good measure. “You’re avoiding the point. Are you sure you’re okay to drive back to New York today? Bitty said you slept on the  _ floor.” _

“Eighteen and a half years of asexuality have taught me that you don’t have to have sex for there to be deets, C. And I am  _ fine. _ ”

Chris tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling of the car. “Oh my God.”

Dex tutted. “He wasn’t fine this morning when I went back to the Haus to see why he’d never come home and he was complaining about how much his back ached. And you can’t say eighteen and a half years.” When he turned his eyes in Nursey’s direction it was hard to tell if he really was looking at him or just checking his mirror. “Everyone’s asexual when they’re a baby.”

“So that’s still eighteen and a half years for me? You can’t erase my identity, Poindexter, just because other people have experienced it, too. I’m not the one going home with girls after Epikegster. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that you need to share deets, too, Dexy.” There was a strange tone to Nursey’s voice which made Chris wonder if he should try and change the conversation. Unfortunately, he had no idea how, and Dex was already red-faced and responding.

“She was too drunk to walk in a straight line so I made sure she got back to her dorm without falling in the pond. Then I went back to  _ our  _ dorm and thought ‘oh Nursey will be back soon I better leave a light on’, and woke up this morning, the light was still on and you still weren’t there.”

Nursey’s face lit up. “There you go! Deets. That wasn’t too hard, was it?”

“Those aren’t deets, Nurse.”

“Still. Eighteen and a half years is valid.”

“Not it’s  _ not _ . How many deets did you have in the first fifteen-ish years of your life?”

“Uh, loads. There was the time Jasmine Williams asked me to marry her in first grade, and—”

Chris zoned out of his friends’ bickering and glanced over at Caitlin to check that she wasn’t feeling too uncomfortable as a result of the conversation. On the contrary, she was smiling softly, as if touched by the turn it had taken. Her fingers tightened around his briefly, and they shared a grin.

* * *

Dex spent a while making sure that he was parked properly in the drop-off point at Logan International and when Nursey went to get out of the car, he frowned at him. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, saying goodbye? Walking in with them?”

Dex let out a huff. “This is a drop-off point, Nurse. We don’t have time for that, and anyway we’re not supposed to all leave the car.”

Nursey rolled his eyes and joined Chris and Caitlin by the trunk of the car anyway. They exchanged hugs and holiday greetings, then when Nursey got back into the car, Chris leaned over him to give Dex the same farewell. He was proud to see that a reluctant smile appeared on Dex’s face.

“Thanks, C. You, too. And you, Cait.”

“Thanks!” She said, pulling Chris back so that she could lean across for a hug. “Say hi to Danny for me.”

Dex grunted. Caitlin pulled back and shut the door. As they headed for the airport doors, the Volkswagen pulled away.

* * *

By the time they had gone through security and found their gate, people were lining up to board. Chris and Caitlin joined the line, and she immediately got out her driver’s license and her phone to pull up her boarding pass. Chris followed suit, but he switched off the screen quickly, and turned his license upside down against his phone, rather than look at his name written out in full.

“So why LA, anyway?” Caitlin asked him, and Chris was glad of a distraction while they waited as his stomach had started to turn at the thought of showing his ID. “There are direct flights to San Francisco, aren’t there?”

“LA’s a bit cheaper! I would normally go to San Francisco, but my dad’s been at some conference in Orange County so it made sense.”

She nodded. “What does he do?”

“He's a software engineer for Google!”

“Oh! And you’ve done a computer science class this semester, too, right? Is that what you want to do?”

Chris shrugged. He had been trying to avoid questions about his future as much as possible, and the concept of even picking a major was still far from his mind. “Probably not? I know I’m okay at it but that’s probably just from being around talk about it for so long. I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Me neither.” She smiled at him encouragingly, and then took a step forwards and Chris realized that they were almost at the front of the queue. He ran his thumb along the back of his license, swallowing against the lump which had formed in his throat. The couple in front of them moved, and then Caitlin headed up to one of the airline staff checking boarding passes and ID. Chris followed to the next member of staff, his hands feeling suddenly warm as he brought the pass back up again on his phone. He was painfully aware of how much longer they spent looking over his ID, searching for a discrepancy or anything which might show it not to actually be his. Finally, they pursed their lips and let him pass without a word.

Caitlin was waiting for him on the jet bridge. “That took a while. Is everything okay?”

He nodded, lips tight, but he let her ease his ID out of his fingers. A moment later he heard the sigh which told him that she had worked out the problem, and she tucked the license into his back pocket for him. “The photo’s a good one. Better than mine, anyway. I was an awkward sixteen year-old.”

A smile tugged at his lips, despite the rate that his heart was still beating. “Thanks. I had it redone last year. I like it, too.”

Her hand snaked around his neck and her lips brushed against his cheek. “Come on, Christopher, if we stand around here much longer they’ll go without us.”

“What seat are you in, again?” he asked as she tugged him along the bridge to the airplane. They had already established that they were four rows apart from each other, and on opposite sides of the aisle, but Chris half-hoped that they had made a mistake and that somehow they were actually next to each other, despite having booked their tickets and checked in online completely separately from each other.

As it was, Chris ended up sitting down, and twisted round in his chair, craning his neck to find Caitlin kneeling on her own seat to wave at him. A steward, trying to get people to take their seats, asked her to sit down.

* * *

Chris had fallen asleep before the stewards had finished pointing out the emergency exits. He woke with a headache and a buzzing in his ears.

“Hey,” a voice whispered next to him. “I got you some water. We’re about ten minutes from landing.”

He blinked, then frowned at Caitlin. “How long have you been there?”

She smiled at him, and held out a cup of water. “I persuaded the person who was sat here to swap with me as soon as they turned the seat-belt light off. You were already asleep, though.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Last night was a late one. Are you okay?”

The water had felt as if it were only shot-sized, and his throat was still dry. Chris wanted to groan and complain about his headache and his still unpopped ears, but he also didn’t want to waste the last few minutes with Caitlin being negative, when he had already slept through so much of their time. “I’m fine! I’m sorry I wasn’t great company, though.”

“I still swapped even knowing you were asleep. It felt better than sitting on my own anyway.”

It wasn’t long before the plane touched down, and as they were taxiing, Chris turned flight mode off on his phone to let his dad know that he was there. Caitlin took her seat-belt off before the light had turned off, on the edge of her seat as she waited for the plane to come to a stop so that she could go and get her bag from the overhead locker before she would be fighting against a crowd to do so.

Their fingers tangled together once they had disembarked, and weaved in and out of the crowd. They came through to where families and friends were waiting and meeting each other, and Chris saw his dad almost immediately. Caitlin’s hand squeezed his momentarily, but let go just before someone crashed into them, squealing as Caitlin was pulled into a hug.

“Missed you, too,” Caitlin said, through fits of laughter. “Hey, this is Chris. Chris this is my stepsister, Ally.”

She was a head shorter than either Chris or Caitlin, and her frizzy hair was bottle blonde. She looked Chris up and down before offering him half a smile, and turning her attention back to Caitlin. “I’m in the drop-off zone.”

“Why would you do that?” Caitlin asked with a sigh. “They’ll tow you.”

“Not if we leave before they have the chance.”

Caitlin’s lips found Chris’s cheek just before she let herself get dragged away. “I’ll text you! And I’ll see you in a couple of weeks!”

Chris smiled giddily after her until his father finally grew tired of waiting for him to make his way over to him.

“Girlfriend?”

Chris jumped. “Hi, dad. Uh, no? Not really? I mean, maybe? We just started dating, I guess.”

In the same situation, his mom would have been asking a hundred and one questions, most of which Chris wouldn’t know how to answer. His dad, however, nodded once, rested his hand on Chris’s shoulder so briefly it may have well been an accident, and turned to lead the way out of the airport.

* * *

During those first couple of days back in San Francisco, Chris talked so much about Samwell, and the hockey team, and Caitlin, that he was sure his family were tired of the topic. When the boys still in Samwell snapped pictures of the Swallow to him two mornings after Epikegster, it was his sister who got a running commentary, including everything from his worry that Caitlin would be upset with him about the photo of them kissing in the hall, to a verbatim reading of the Frog group chat when Dex realized he had been accused of hooking with the drunk girl he had walked home, to non-stop raving about Kent Parson. Shelley eventually ended the conversation by asking who Kent Parson was, and leaving Chris shocked enough that she could close the door to her room without him objecting.

His mom was a little more patient, asking question after question about his friends, and spent the time that they were decorating the Christmas tree listening to his explanation that some of his friends from the team were celebrating Chanukah instead, even though she didn’t particularly seem very interested in TiVo being outraged that Holster had never tried a buñuelo, or in the debate over which version of the dreidel game had the right rules.

“Do you even know what they’re talking about, Chrissy?” his mom asked after twenty minutes of Chris telling her that Jack’s version of it must be the right one.

His hand twitched. “I— Some game some of them play? Can you not—” He took a deep breathe, trying to gather together all his courage and channel Lardo’s voice, but the words got stuck in his throat. She had  _ always  _ called him that. It was his name, and at least she hadn’t called him by his full name in four years. Chrissy could be gender neutral, couldn’t it?

“What was that?” she asked, as she disentangled some tinsel.

“Nothing,” Chris sighed. He pulled another bauble out of the box. “I don’t remember this one.”

* * *

For the most part, his dad had been avoiding the conversations. Of course, he had asked a few questions on the drive from the airport to home, but they had all been about what Chris had been doing - school, hockey, what sort of food the canteen had - not about who he was surrounding himself with. While his mom probably knew Nursey and Dex’s middle names by now, his dad could recite Chris’s goalie stats and essay grades. Chris was surprised, then, when they were at the SAP center between the second and third periods against the Blues the weekend after he had come home, and his dad turned to him and said, “So, that girl. At the airport.”

“Caitlin?”

“Caitlin,” he repeated, testing out the name on his tongue. It came out closer to Kaylin, but Chris nodded.

“Yeah. She’s a frosh, too. She plays volleyball.”

“She’s from California?”

“Yeah. L.A. Uh, I was thinking— I mean, she suggested it, but— about the game against the Kings-”

His dad smiled. “I can watch it on TV.”

“Dad—” Chris objected, suddenly feeling guilty.

“No, I shouldn’t be up too late, anyway. I might have to go into work that weekend.”

“Right. Uh, and, uh, with it being a late one—”

He hummed. “Maybe you should stay in L.A. until the next day, yes?”

Chris ducked his head in embarrassment.

“Chris, you are nineteen. You are at college. This is okay.”

“Thanks, dad.”

His father’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “I’m proud of you, son.”

Eyes itching, Chris was glad of the distraction of the players coming back out onto the ice for the third period.

* * *

The next week passed in a similar blur to a hockey game. Not only was he watching the Sharks live as often as they played; making the most of his season ticket for the short time he was able to go to home games; but he was experiencing the same bizarre suspension of time. Each day dragged, and he found himself missing Samwell with an ache, even despite frequent calls to his friends. On the other hand, he was so busy that he was constantly surprised to find himself another day further into the break. He and Shelley spent one of the days their parents were working doing their Christmas shopping, and another meeting up with friends in the Bay area. Then came Christmas itself, and afterwards the clean-up.

Saturday saw him strewing clothes all over his bed and still wishing that he hadn’t left certain outfits at Samwell. He stared at a pair of slacks at length, then shook his head, and discarded them in favor of some jeans. Biting his lips, he pulled at the waistband of his underwear, then after a moment’s indecision, he stripped himself of the enhancing briefs he had generally opted for since surgery, and reached for a packer instead.

It was his Niemi jersey that he pulled over his head after ten minutes hovering on the landing and asking Shelley if it was  _ really  _ okay to wear a hockey jersey to a date.

“You’re going to a  _ hockey game _ , Chris. Wear the jersey,” she had told him.

* * *

Chris had never driven to L.A. on his own before. That was the reasoning he gave himself for trusting his SatNav when it got him to turn towards UCLA. Caitlin wouldn’t have given him the wrong zip code. It was strange, though, to suddenly find himself at a college campus, his SatNav cheerily telling him to “turn next left and your destination is located on the right.”

He frowned at the sorority house which stood exactly where he had been told to go. He rummaged for his phone and looked up the address again. All she had sent was a house number, road name, and zip code, but that definitely matched up with the house in front of him. Chris bit his lip. What were the odds of a different zip code in the same area of California having the same road name and Caitlin mixing the two of them up? He didn’t understand how he could have ended up at the wrong place, and yet the sign outside the house, with a string of Greek letters, followed by the words ‘Latin Sorority, Inc.’ begged to differ.

When he knocked on the door, it was opened by a woman with black hair down to her waist and a red dress contrasting with her brown skin. “Can I help you?”

“Uh… I think I might be in the wrong place. Uh.” He took a step back, in confusion. She looked at him in amusement.

“Luisa? Quién es?” Came a voice from somewhere within the house. The woman twisted her head back to call back in Spanish. Chris watched in confusion as they exchanged questions and answers, and then the voice called down again, “Chris?”

Chris didn’t recognize the voice, but when the woman at the door jerked her chin at him to ask if that was his name, he nodded.

“Sí,” she shouted, then stepped back to let him past. “Third floor.”

Still uncertain exactly what was happening, Chris made his way up the stairs. At the third floor, he found a girl with her back to him, leaning through a half open door. When the floorboards squeaked under Chris’s feet, she turned, and he recognized her as Ally, who had picked Caitlin up from the airport.

“Hi! It’s nice to see you again,” she said.

Chris nodded. “Uh, you too!”

“Cait’s just finishing getting ready. She won’t be a minute. She forgot to tell you to text when you got here. Most people just do because she might not have her implants in. But it’s okay. You found us!”

“Uh, yeah. What is— I mean— Why are you here? Not, why are you here when I’m seeing Caitlin! But why are you in a sorority house?”

Ally just laughed in response, and rolled her eyes towards the room Caitlin was in. “I live here. Cait’s just staying for winter break. We had Christmas at my mom’s — at her dad’s — but most of the time we’ve been here.”

Chris still felt lost, but when that showed on his face, Ally let out a long sigh. “Look, her dad’s an asshole, okay?”

The explanation did nothing to clarify things for Chris, but at that moment the door swung open, and Caitlin was grinning at him. “Hi!”

Ally smiled between them. “Right, well I’ll leave you to it,” she said, and disappeared into another bedroom. Caitlin pulled him back into the one she had been in before he got there. Chris dropped his overnight bag next to the door, and looked around at the heavy metal posters in surprise.

“Uh, the girls who live in this room have both gone home for break,” Caitlin explained. “I was thinking we could just get takeout for dinner? I know Nursey was trying to get us to go out, but it’s a lot? Those noisy environments? And we’ll already have the game, so-” She bit her lip, eyeing him as if worried how he was going to react.

“That sounds great! I’d like to stay in. What sort of takeout?”

“Um… How do you feel about sushi?”

Chris grinned. “I love it.”

* * *

Half an hour later they were sat, cross legged, on the floor of Caitlin’s temporary bedroom with their takeout boxes.

“Sorry this isn't really the most romantic dinner date,” Caitlin said.

“Oh! No, it's fine! I wasn’t expecting to have it in a sorority house, but it’s great! Good food, good company,” Chris trailed off with a shrug.

Caitlin bit her lip and looked down into her sushi. “Yeah, I should have warned you I was staying here.”

“I guess I had no reason for assuming you'd be at your dad's?”

“Why wouldn’t you assume that? But my dad— It's complicated.”

Chris frowned as he dipped a California roll in some soy sauce. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“It's just the way he thinks I should be. Like, he's the one who insisted on me having implants, and if I'm not wearing them I should be able to lip read and still… still pass as normal.”

Chris stilled. “You are normal. Whether you can hear or not.”

“That's not how he sees it. And… and I guess I spent a lot of time believing him. Especially once I was living with him full time and wasn’t part of the Deaf community at all any more.”

“So he— I mean you're here because—” Chris bit his lip uncertainly.

“He's my dad. It's not that he doesn't  _ love  _ me, it's just easier here. Ally doesn’t mind if I have a day without all this.” She waved her hands around her ears.

Chris poked his maki around in the box, still frowning down at it. “I don’t mind either. I’ll try and learn sign language! There must be, like, videos and stuff.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Right. Because you lip read, right? Except that you just said that’s one of the things your dad—”

“It’s harder. It’s not— It won’t ever be a hundred percent effective. But I’m past the point of dreaming that everyone I know might actually learn sign language for me. It’s just as hard as learning any language, so—”

“I get it, okay? Not wanting to ask people for things, and not wanting to cause trouble. So I’m telling you it’s never a trouble with me.”

Color spread across her cheeks. “Thanks. If you learned sign language, that would be— well, that would be incredible, actually.” She pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips. “What do you— When you say you get it—”

“Uh, lots of things, I guess, but recently I was thinking— My mom still calls me Chrissy? I think my dad and sister have mostly stopped now. They haven’t really these holidays, anyway. But— It’s a nickname and it’s not like it’s really  _ gendered.  _ It feels like it shouldn’t be worth making a big deal of.”

Her hand was warm over his. “It’s a big deal if you don’t like it. And that’s okay if you don’t? Sometimes people just don’t like certain nicknames. I’ve been through so many phases with my name, and then Will called me Caity the other week and I thought ‘wow, that’s weird, nobody’s called me that in forever, I don’t think I like that any more.’ And I don't have the extra hangups and associations that you must have with your name. It’s okay to stop being comfortable with something like that. Don’t you think— I mean, your mom would understand that, right?”

Chris bit his lip, trying to imagine it. He didn’t think he’d ever explicitly told her he  _ liked  _ Chrissy in the first place. It had just, sort of, stuck.

“You won’t know unless you ask,” Caitlin told him, her fingers squeezing around his hand once before she drew it back to pop another roll in her mouth. When she had swallowed it she shrugged. “It’s okay to make yourself comfortable. Isn’t that what you were just trying to tell me?” When Chris didn’t say anything in response, she took pity on him in changing the conversation. “Hey, how about I drive tonight? I know the best roads to go on.”

* * *

It had always been strange going to games as an away fan. Even though they stuck close to crowds of Sharks fans, and sat in the away section of the center, Chris felt constantly watched; constantly judged for his teal jersey. It was not quite the same, either, to watch the players skate out without the theatrics of the shark jaw. Once the game was in full flow, however, it was easy to forget that they were in enemy territory. Less than three minutes in, Pavelski scored, and Chris pulled Caitlin to her feet in celebration, but too soon afterwards, there was a hooking penalty and the jeers from the rest of the arena seemed to echo. When the Kings pulled even, Chris’s groan was lost in cheers, but Caitlin’s hand in his was a reminder that the final score didn’t have to ruin their evening.

They went to join their separate toilet lines in the first break, and by the time they had made their way back to each other, it was time for the second period to begin. By the next break, they were trailing 2-1, and Chris wished that they could get some alcohol. They settled for sodas, instead.

The beginning of the final period, Caitlin sat forwards on her seat, determined not to miss anything. She teared her eyes away from the game when the Kings scored for a third time. “We should try and catch a game in Providence or Boston.” Chris just nodded back at her. It was hard watching their team be beaten, but he was more interested in her reaction to the game, now. He was enjoying the way she was so intently focused on the action, and the fact that there was no pressure as far as it being a date went. It was still a shared experience, and he was still happy to be next to her for it, even if their conversation was limited to their outrage at the ref’s decisions, and their frustration over missed shots.

* * *

They were quiet on the way back to the chapter house, in part from fatigue, in part disappointment from the loss, and in part they were simply comfortable to be silent in each other’s company. When this occurred to Chris — that there was still no awkwardness between them even after hours of each other’s company — he lolled his head to the side and watched her drive with a smile on his face. She didn’t notice until she had parked and switched off the engine. She turned the light on so that she could see him properly.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just— I had a good night. Thanks.”

“Me too.”

For a moment, they simply smiled at each other. There was a warmth in Chris’s chest, and for every time her eyes flickered down to his lips, his heart swelled a little more.

“Come on,” she said, quietly. “Let’s go inside.”

They moved slowly, relaxed and happy enough to be free from haste. Chris’s hand rested on Caitlin’s waist as they made their way up the first flight of stairs. Her lips brushed against his jaw on the landing, and she led him up to the third floor by the hand. They kissed by the door to the room she had been staying in, slow and soft, but it still left Chris breathless when she pulled away.

“I’m just going to—” She pointed at the bathroom, and took a step towards it. “Make yourself comfortable?”

“Wait—” Chris started to say, but she had already turned away. He made for the bedroom, but only to grab his toothbrush before he went to the other bathroom across the hall. He had only just got back and sat down on the bed when Caitlin came in. She dropped her shoes by the now-closed door, and walked over to him, her fingers clutching onto the hem of her t-shirt. She crawled into his lap, but then hesitated, looking at him, with uncertainty. 

“Do you want—” 

He wrapped his arms around her, but shook his head. “I—” He frowned. “We need to talk about it more first.”

“Talk first?” she asked, moving her hands to ask the question in sign language as well in clarification. Chris looked at her hands for a moment, trying to memorize the motion they had made, then mimicked them with a nod. She nodded back. “Okay. Now?”

Chris bit his lip, then shook his head again. “I’d rather just make out?”

“Talking… Is that just for… all the way?” Caitlin asked.

Chris hesitated, then nodded. “More or less.”

“Can I ask if different things are okay for now, and you say yes or no? No pressure either way.”

Chris nodded.

She bit her lip, as if trying to decide where to start. Chris took her hand and slid it under the hem of his t-shirt. “This is okay,” he told her.

“And… In a bit, maybe, taking this off? And me taking my top off?”

He felt as if his eyes might bulge out of their sockets as he agreed.

“How about jeans?

Chris nodded again, and Caitlin smiled. “I mean they’re just uncomfortable to stay in,” she continued.

“Of course,” he said. “It’s just  _ practical  _ to take them off.”

Immediately, she leaned in with a kiss, this time deeper. He fell back on the pillows, holding onto her as their lips slid against each other. When he rolled them onto their sides, and moved a hand to cup the back of her head, a tension leaked away from her shoulders. They broke apart to catch their breath, and Chris pulled back to admire her, only to find that there was an exhilarated nervousness in her expression. All he had to do was frown in concern, wondering if she had more questions, but instead she buried her face in his jersey and muttered, “I really like you.”

“I really like you too. I was thinking, actually, and we haven’t really made anything official, but—”

Caitlin placed one hand over Chris’s chest to stop him from talking, then sat up, leaning over to get her implants. He wrapped a hand around her wrist, and shook his head again. He took out his phone and pulled up the notes app, typing and deleting until he was happy enough with the wording to turn the screen so she could see it.

_ Will you be my girlfriend? _

Her cheeks colored as she read it, and when she nodded, it was with such a wide beam that Chris couldn’t resist pressing his lips to the corner of it. “Yes,” she said, kissing him back. They fell into each other, their kisses growing messier and messier as their hands gripped onto each other, until Chris was moaning into Caitlin’s mouth.

She stroked down his torso, and bunched up the material of his jersey in her fist, then drew back to check for consent. Chris nodded, sitting up to help Caitlin pull the top over his head. He shivered a little over the exposure, but when she dropped her eyes over his chest, it didn’t feel invasive. She kissed the middle of his scar, then sat up and pulled her own t-shirt off.

“Oh,” breathed Chris. A trembling hand curved over Caitlin’s hip, to explore soft skin. She bent back towards him, but had only pressed a light peck to his cheek before she pulled away again, her nose scrunching up and her mouth curling in amusement. “What?” Chris asked.

She snorted. “I just remembered we’re in a sorority house.”

“Is that worse than freshman dorms?”

“What?”

Chris fumbled for his phone, now caught up in the blankets, so that he could type the question out. She laughed even harder. “I’m not going to suggest we book a hotel or anything. It’s fine. It’s just— It’s—” Her head dropped forwards and she chuckled into his neck. Chris pulled his arms closer around her, his chest shaking as he caught her giggles.

“Let’s sleep?” she asked, when their laughter had subsided, and Chris nodded. She slid out of bed, keeping her back to him as she took off her jeans, but she turned back to look at him watching her. His face heated up, especially when she quirked an eyebrow at him and asked, “I thought we decided that staying in jeans was impractical?”

Chris sat up to undo the zipper, then stood to push the denim off his hips, all the while aware of her watching him. They stood across from each, unabashedly checking each other out; in stark contrast to the last time they had shared a bed, when they had privately changed and avoided looking at each other. Chris felt exposed in just his underpants, but at the same time, he realized, it felt just right. It wasn’t an exposure which he was uncomfortable with, but rather he enjoyed the way her eyes lingered on his abs, just as his own gaze roamed over her lace-covered breasts and down to strong, athletic thighs. When he dipped his hand into his underwear, and her eyes bulged, Chris winced. He shook his head slightly, pulling out his packer and reaching for his t-shirt to wrap it up, then he placed the both of them in his bag.

“Are you still okay?” she said, resting a hand on his chest. Chris almost felt overwhelmed by the amount of care in her voice, enough that he could barely respond. He simply pressed his lips against hers and let his body melt into hers as they backed up, again, to the bed.

* * *

Chris resisted texting any of the SMH until he got back to San Francisco, the next afternoon, but when he did, his phone didn’t stop going off. Bitty’s excitment fuelled Chris’s joy, and when Nursey suggested Frog Skype later that evening, Dex agreed without an objection. Ransom and Holster’s messages comprised mostly of nonsensical capital letters, smilies and eggplant emojis, while Lardo had sent him a ‘cool, dude. Congrats and like.’

Chris knew he had a stupid grin on his face, but he couldn’t contain it.

“What are you smiling about, Chrissy?”

Chris jumped in surprise. He stared over at his mom, wondering when she had come into the room. “Mom…” He swallowed and thought over Caitlin’s words from the day before.  _ You won’t know unless you ask. It’s okay to make yourself comfortable.  _ “Mom, can you… not call me that?”

Confusion flashed across her face, and Chris’s heart rose into his throat. He hated the thought that he might be hurting her; that he was rejecting the name his parents had given him for a second time. “What am I supposed to call you, Chr—” Her lips pursed and she shook her head before rephrasing. “What do you want me to call you?”

“Just Chris. Please. For now. Or Christopher if you— I mean if you feel comfortable with that. I know it’s not really—”

She moved in closer and sat down next to him. “Chris. Baby. It’s okay. For now?”

“I… I don’t know. I sometimes wonder if I took the easy way out? Just calling myself Chris. Dr Park told me so many times to think about if I wanted to change it completely and I didn’t really get why, but— Would you be offended?”

She was silent for long enough that Chris looked up at her, nervous to see what her reaction was, but he was surprised to see her thoughtful expression. “If you were— I mean— If we’d known you were a boy when you were born,” she said, slowly; careful to word it right. “I wanted to call you Frank. Your father liked the name Linton. We never managed to agree on it. If you like either of those, then maybe that will stop you feeling like you’re outright rejecting our choice. But we’re not the ones who have to live with it.”

Chris stared down at his knees. “I don’t know, mom. I think— Chris feels like  _ me.  _ Or Christopher does. That’s— I call myself Chris. I like it, I just—”

His mother’s hand rubbed up and down his arm, and the sensation helped him to breathe. “Whatever you decide, it’s okay. And you can always change your mind. I want you to be certain before you change anything legally, though, okay? It will be a real hassle and you won’t want to go through it twice.” A smile tugged at his lips, and she looked delighted. “There’s that smile again. Now are you going to tell me what had you so happy before, or what?”

As Chris told his mom how his date with Caitlin had gone, he felt closer to her than he had in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing that isn't explicitly given consent for happens. The fade to black was deliberate because of the general tone of the chapter, and I know that makes it less obvious what does/doesn't happen but the consent discussion beforehand does get honoured.
> 
> Next chapter they'll be back at Samwell! Hopefully that should come a little sooner than this one did, too.


	13. Class Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no time to ease into the Spring semester, with a game their first weekend back at Samwell and then plunging straight into class shopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for locker room talk about genitalia (after the game).

New Year came and went, and, before long, Chris was on another plane, sleeping all the way back to Boston. He was missing Caitlin for company this time, since their flights back hadn’t coincided, and Nursey wasn’t driving up until Saturday morning, so it was Holster who came to pick Chris up from the airport on Friday evening. Chris was happy to listen to him talk about ringing in the New Year with the Oluransis, and his and Ransom’s road trip back to Samwell. Tired out from an afternoon’s worth of travelling, he found himself nodding off to the deep cadence of Holster’s voice, and it surprised him when they pulled up outside Chris’s dorm.

“Go get some proper sleep, bro,” Holster told him with a toothy smile. “I’ll see you for conditioning in the morning.”

* * *

 

Arriving at the gym locker rooms to the sound of chirps was like coming home. The moment he was through the door, Dex was teasing him about begging Holster for a lift instead of taking the Samwell shuttle like everyone else, and Ollie was demanding to know why he was only just now hearing that Chris had a girlfriend, which elicited chirps from the rest of the team about him not checking the group chat. Ransom and Holster put on a playlist which they claimed to have perfected over the break just for locker room tunes, but they paused it again when Nursey came in.

“Bro, we should have put a fanfare on here.”

“Or just recorded our voices saying ‘Nursey’s late again’.”

Nursey flipped them the finger. “Fuck off, Holster. There was traffic.”

“You're not going back to New York tonight, too, are you?” Jack asked, and although Chris was fairly sure he was asking as a joke, he did look genuinely worried. Nursey laughed and shook his head, then walked over to get changed.

“Alright, Chowder?” he called.

“Yeah! Just… Wow! It's like I never left,” Chris replied with a laugh. Everything was exactly the same as it always had been. “But I totally did because I really missed you guys.”

“Aw, I missed you too, C!” Nursey said, his voice muffled inside his top. After a moment of watching him struggle to pull the top on, Dex got up to help. Nursey grinned at him when his head popped through the hole. “Thanks. You miss me, Poindexter?”

Dex shoved him lightly. “No.”

“You're always free to Skype me!”

“I don’t know. You can’t dress yourself without me, so I don’t think I want to see you when I’m not around.”

Nursey snorted and leaned in to retort, but it was too quiet for Chris to hear. A flush spread across Dex's cheeks as Jack called on the team to hurry up. Chris was distracted by the rush to pull his armor on, and missed his chance to check that whatever Nursey had said hadn’t left Dex in too bitter a mood.

* * *

While he was waiting for the showers after conditioning, Chris scrolled through his phone, dismissing notifications, reading Bitty’s Twitter feed version of that morning, and replying to Caitlin’s text commiserating about the early morning. He had just wished her a good flight when Dex came out of the shower.

“Jesus, C, I know you have a reputation to uphold of having all your weird goalie rituals, but you couldn’t move a bit quicker to having a shower? I thought we were going to lunch, and Nursey’s got to get his stuff back to the dorm, and then we need time for the food to settle before afternoon practice. And you're still wearing your gym clothes.”

Chris didn’t know how to respond. There was a tension in his shoulders which he didn’t know how to release, and he throat felt tight.

“Chill, Dex,” Nursey called, not turning away from the mirror as he ran fingers coated in leave-in conditioner through his wet hair. “We’ve got loads of time. We’ll just take my stuff back after lunch.”

“Shower’s free!” Jell-O announced, striding in, a towel wrapped around his waist. Chris gathered together his towel and shower things, but when he stood up, Jack stopped him.

“One second, Chowder. Listen up, everyone! The pond’s frozen over so Coach Hall said we can go there in place of practice this afternoon, and then we’ll watch videos for tomorrow’s game at the Haus this evening. So, three o’clock sharp at the Pond in full gear.”

* * *

After lunch with his fellow frogs, followed by some hanging out at Dex and Nursey’s suite, Chris went back to his own dorm to change, then met up with his friends, again, on the corner between the two freshman dorm blocks. They walked down to the Pond together, laughing about anything, and enjoying being in each other’s company again. When they arrived, Chris dropped the bag holding his skates and extra pads on the ground next to him, and took a moment to stare at the pond in awe. “Wow! ‘Swawesome.”

“Wow, C,” came Nursey’s dry tones just behind him. “Seriously never seen a frozen lake before?”

Chris looked over his shoulder to pout at Nursey’s smirk. “It’s not just some lake, it’s the _Pond_!” He looked back over the expanse of ice with a shrug. “And it’s not like it happens every day in San Francisco, Nursey.”

Holster’s bewildered exclamation about cocoa distracted them, and they headed over to where some thermos flasks were getting passed around. Ollie spat a mouthful of the drink into the snow, coughing and spluttering for a moment before he recovered. “Yo, Bitty, the Daily’s here!” he said, and the whole team turned to look at the crew advancing on them. Chris recognized Jodie from his profile interview leading the way. “Do a jump for the front page!” Ollie suggested.

Bitty chuckled, a smug smile playing on his lips. “Y’all are never scrambling to get me doing jumps during practice. But _fine._ Just one.”

The flasks were left, forgotten, next to Lardo and the team gathered onto the ice to watch and cheer as Bitty span in the air.

“Why do you never do that in a game?” Ransom was asking when Chris had finished cheering enough to listen to everyone else’s reactions.

“I’m telling you,” Holster said, skating over to Ransom so that he could discuss game plays. With a chuckle, Chris skated off to set up a goal for their game of shinny. Those of them who were kitted up and ready to play started to pass the puck around, the defensemen battling for it between them, and showing off with tricks on their sticks. Chris had almost forgotten that this was really more than just them playing around, and that they had an actual game the next day, until Jack came over splitting them into teams for a warm-up round. Wicky’s questioning of if Jack was turning shinny into a real practice suggested that Chris was not the only person who had been expecting it to be less serious if they were outside.

“He literally said this was _instead_ of practice earlier. Doesn’t that mean it’s not practice?” someone else grumbled. Chris skated around his make-shift goal, marked out a crease with his skate, and narrowed his gaze on the puck that Jack was holding up over Ransom and Holster’s sticks.

* * *

Once practice was over, they flocked en masse to the Haus where Ollie and TiVo set to work cooking taco fillings. Dex and Chris had to pull Bitty completely away from the kitchen when Nursey was nominated to make his own vegan option.

“I’ve seen Nursey in my kitchen before, and—”

“Yo, chill, Bits, this is fine.”

“Bro knows how spices work. And nobody else likes black beans.”

“Just because you don’t know how to enjoy a meal that isn’t purely meat and carbs, Ritvo, doesn’t mean we all want to have that sort of diet,” Nursey retorted, ignorant to the fact that his knife had slipped so that it was hovering dangerously close to his thumb.

“Fucking—” Dex let go of Bitty’s elbow and darted back into the kitchen. “Hey, Nurse, how about I cut the onions, okay?”

“I knew I should have just made something earlier that we could have,” Bitty grumbled.

“Come on, Bits,” Chris told him with a chuckle. “You can sit here, and enjoy not having to cook.”

Jack pulled a chair forwards. “Yeah, come and sit with me, Bittle. You never told me what classes you’re doing this semester.”

Bitty sat down slowly, and flashed a glare in Chris’s direction as he put himself deliberately in the doorway so that Bitty couldn’t escape. “I have no idea what I’m taking this semester,” he told Jack.

Chris tuned out of their conversation as some more of the team pushed past him so that they could find somewhere to sit. He looked back into the kitchen to where the four hockey players were bustling around the worktop. It was always surprising to him how many of them could actually fit into the Haus, even with the majority of them surpassing six feet. The fact that a little bit later twenty-four of them would be able to squash into the den, each with a bowlful of tacos as they watched videos in preparation for their game the next day was incredible to Chris, even knowing that it would mean cramped legs and an increasingly warm room.

* * *

Next day’s game was rough, despite all their preparation, and Chris was disappointed that a puck had slipped by him while he was wincing over a vicious spear which Nursey had been subjected to. In the end, however, it was Samwell who won. There was a content relief in their locker room chirps after the game, but when Shitty stood up and suggested they hit the clubs to celebrate, nobody was particularly enthusiastic.

“Shits, at least five of us want to do nothing but go and put ice on our balls,” Wagner pointed out. “Their sticks were everywhere today.”

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Holster said. “Can’t you make yourself infertile doing that?”

“What?” Ransom said in a deadpan voice.

“Like cutting off the blood supply!”

“Holtzy, I’m ninety-nine per cent sure that’s not a thing.”

“It is! I’m Googling it.”

“Guys,” Bitty piped up, in a weak voice. “Can we not talk about this?”

“Bitty, it’s fine. You can ice it.”

“My dick is fine, Justin!”

Chris felt his cheeks burning, and stood to make a getaway. “Uh, so, if nobody’s going in the shower right now, can I— Or, uh, maybe I just need the toilet.”

His comment was lost under the triumphant whoop Ransom gave. “See! I was right! It's _suggested_ you ice it.”

Nursey nudged Chris. “Just go. I’ll stop anyone from disturbing you.”

* * *

Caitlin met up with him when he got into the foyer of the ice rink, and they greeted each other with an enthusiasm which suggested longer apart than the three days it had actually been. Chris was happy to then go back and curl up in Caitlin’s bed, while they watched Guardians of the Galaxy with her roommate, Makena. Occasionally, he would get a snap from Lardo of Shitty doing something ridiculous at a bar, or the group chat would buzz with activity, but Chris only gave them a fraction of his attention. All three of them were on the edge of sleep by the time the film ended. Chris forced himself to his feet anyway.

“You going?” Caitlin slurred. He waited until her eyes had flickered open, then nodded.

“Class tomorrow, you know?”

“Class. Right. Goodnight, Chris.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Goodnight, Cait.”

With a last check that neither of them were obviously wearing anything they might regret falling asleep in, Chris turned the light off for them and left quietly.

* * *

Monday brought the new semester, and class shopping. Late afternoon, Chris had arranged to meet his Chinese study group so that he could catch up with them and brush up on their language skills after the holidays. They had been at the library for about forty minutes when Chris’s phone beeped with an email notification from Bitty about dinner.

“Oh, uh… I have to go?” he said in shaky Mandarin and questionable grammar. He didn’t tear his eyes away from the words ‘first come, first serve.’ He was seen off with a chorus of goodbyes, and he strode out the room, picking up into a run the moment he was out of the door. There was no way he was letting Holster get all of that honey garlic chicken.

He arrived panting. “I ran all the way here,” he said as he burst threw the door. “Man, it’s so cold.” He dropped his hands to his knees, attempting to catch his breath. “Is there still food?”

“There is!” Bitty told him. “Nobody else was here and Lardo was the first.”

Lardo poked a candle flame with her fork and smiled smugly. “Study group is nothing to Haus dinner.”

“I was in a study group, too,” Chris told her, taking a bite of the food Bitty had just put in front of him. He couldn’t hold back a moan. “But, mm, this is really good, Bitty, thanks. I’m always hungry,” he said around a mouthful of chicken, as Holster crashed through the door, followed by Nursey.

“Chicken?” Holster said, and he slid into a seat and looked at Bitty hopefully.

Nursey snorted, and walked over to the pans slowly so that he could peer in. “Chill, Holtzy. Hey, Bits, have these potatoes got butter in?”

“Who do you take me for, Derek Nurse? I left the butter separate on the table.”

“Oh, chill! You’re the fucking best.”

A minute later he sat down next to Chris with a plate full of potato, broccoli and peas, and grabbed a bottle of sriracha from the middle of the table.

“Any good classes today?” Chris asked the room in general.

Holster shrugged. “The one I just came from was the only one I was trying today, and I pretty much knew that was already going on my timetable. It’s with my favorite Econ professor. Tomorrow’s going to be my busy day for shopping.”

“I sorted one out, but now I’ve been thinking about what I need to fulfill credits,” Bitty said, flopping heavily into the seat next to Lardo. “I was thinking a Comp Sci class for quantitative reasoning?”

“Ooh, maybe! I think it’s mostly that or Math?”

“I’m leaving that until next year. There’s a second-year Linguistics class which counts,” Nursey pipped in. “Maybe you could take that, Bits?”

Bitty pulled a face. “Maybe…”

Chris turned to Nursey. “Which requirements are you filling this year, then?”

“Uh, I’m taking L5 Spanish and I’ve already done a writing credit. I was thinking trying to get science in this term? But this Philosophy one looks good as well so it depends what else I end up taking.”

Chris nodded. “Cait and I are going to do one of the Chem classes without prerequisites. You should do that with us!”

“Ah, Chemistry isn’t really my thing. But thanks for the offer.”

The door swung open, and more of the team piled in, loudly debating who would win in the game that evening between the Falconers and the Aces.

“Dex, bro, you have got to be fucking kidding me if you think the Falconers have any chance!” Wicky was saying.

“I don’t know,” Ransom cut in. “Pitch Mashkov against Parse and my money’s on the Falconers every time.”

“Yeah, but we’re talking a whole Stanley Cup winning team against—”

“Okay, who wants chicken?” Bitty practically shouted over the sound of his chair clattering to the floor as he stood up.

Amidst the clamor of their teammates, Nursey shot Chris a look, and said in an undertone, “Hey. You want to go for a walk?”

The two of them nearly slipped out unnoticed, but Dex reached towards them before they managed. “Are you—” He started, and Nursey shook his head.

“We’ll see you later. Get your dead bird, Poindexter.” Ignoring Dex’s responding finger, he grabbed a piece of bread, squeezed a pool of honey in the middle of it, and folded it up to eat as he and Chris left the Haus.

“Uh, what was that about?”

Nursey shook his head. “Nothing,” he said through a mouthful of sandwich. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

Chris frowned, but waited quietly for elaboration.

“I guess… I just never thanked you for what you said to me at that volleyball game. Not properly, anyway, and you really helped. I wanted you to know that we talked. A lot.”

His mind flashed back to that conversation, and Chris glanced over at Nursey. “You and your— Uh. This guy? You talked?”

“Yeah. We— I’ve been trying to do research on sex-positive aces and, uh, queerplatonic partners and stuff like that. He has been too, which is nice.”

“So are you—”

“We’re not defining it.”

Chris supposed he should have seen that response coming. After all, Nursey rarely liked to label anything. “Okay. But there is _something_ to, uh… not define?”

The corner of Nursey’s mouth twitched. “Ch’yeah, C. We’re like making out and shit, if that’s what you want me to tell you.”

“No!” Chris blushed in mortification. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t need to know what you’re doing.”

“Chill. There’s some ‘swawesome cuddling involved and talking. Talking is good. And some making out. But no sex. Again. Yet. Or maybe at all. Or I don’t know.” He looked down at the ground, kicked at it awkwardly in such a way that left him wincing.

“Did you just stub your toe?” Chris asked, laughing.

“Shut up.”

“Oh my God, you did.”

“Shut up, C.”

“So… You’ve met Caitlin. Does that mean I—”

“He’s still in the closet, C.” The look on Nursey’s face expressed guilt and disappointment, and it was the same emotions which filled Chris. They had already discussed this and he should know better than to ask someone else to come out for him.

“No, yeah, I understand.”

“I’m sorry, C. I wish I could tell you.”

“It’s okay. As long as you’re happy, and safe.”

“He’s— I can’t describe it because he’s the last place I thought I’d find safe, but I really do feel— Yeah.”

At the sight of Nursey’s soft and slightly bashful smile, Chris threw his arm around his neck and pulled him close. “I’m glad.”

* * *

The next evening, Chris met up with Caitlin for the Chemistry class they had decided to try out together, and after they had exchanged expressions of enthusiasm for the class on the way out, Caitlin took a hold of his wrist and pulled him along the street.

“Where are we going?”

“I thought—” She bit her lip and slowed her steps. “Makena goes to Deaf Support meetings. That they organize through Facebook? I thought maybe— I mean, I’ve never really done that sort of thing, but then Ally was saying some stuff over the holidays and after the Kings game I got thinking. I don’t mind if you don’t want to come with me, but—”

Chris shook his head. “I’ll come! Moral support, right?”

“Right! And if you still wanted to, you might be able to sign up for ASL classes there. I mean. If you were serious about that, I mean.”

“Oh! Yes! Of course I was serious about it.”

“And if you want me to return the favor at all— I don’t know if that’s even appropriate, but, well, I’d be happy to.”

Chris nodded. He hadn’t been to any Trans at Samwell meetings, being more focused on building up relationships with the hockey team, and content to let himself slip back into the closet as long as people were assuming his gender correctly. He blessed his genes for making him tall, his hormones for having helped his voice to drop in tone and his cheeks to lose their chubbiness, and the Samwell Men’s Hockey team for letting him play and immediately grouping him in with a large group of men. And yet, the idea of having other friends who _understood_ was appealing. He just needed the courage to go.

A poster was stuck on the door of the library room Makena had told Caitlin to go to, and they both stopped to read it. 

> Samwell Deaf Community
> 
> Our meetings are run bilingually. All are encouraged to use their preferred method of communication, and efforts will be made to translate for others. If your first language is not ASL or English, or you have any other specific needs, please let us know so that accommodations can be made.
> 
> Today’s translators are: Karen and George

As they walked through the door, a bespectacled girl greeted them and followed up with a string of signs which meant nothing to Chris. Caitlin responded in kind and after a moment turned to Chris. “This is Donna. She’s a junior.”

“Hi,” Chris said, holding up a hand in greeting.

“She says they’re usually pretty small meetings. The socials are a bit bigger, but the Support they just do in case people need it, so it might just be us and the seniors who run it.”

“Is that okay?” Chris asked, looking at her curiously. He wasn’t sure what she really wanted from this, whether it was actual support or just to feel a little more a part of the Deaf community.

“It’ll be good to get to know people here, so that I know more than just Makena before showing up at a social.”

Chris nodded as they took their seats, with Caitlin next to Donna. Immediately, they were greeted by a couple of seniors.

“Hi! I'm George, this is Karen,” the man said, signing as he did so. “Would you like a male or female translator?”

“Caitlin,” Caitlin said, and Chris just about recognized the letters her fingers spelled out, though he didn’t know the sign she concluded with. “I don’t need a translator, but thank-you.”

“Are you sure?” Karen asked. “A lot of people like to use this as an opportunity to just speak in one language. It’s a safe place.”

Caitlin sat back in her chair, and Chris could see the inner conflict across her face, but, rather than reply, she turned to him and nodded to tell him to introduce himself.

“Uh, hi. I’m Chris. I’d like a male translator, please.” George nodded, and Chris waited until he had signed the sentence.

“You don’t have to wait for me to keep up,” George told him with a smile.

“Uh, right. Okay. Well I’m not Deaf. I’m Caitlin’s boyfriend so I’m here for her. And, uh, if any of you know any good places to learn Sign Language, I’d be interested. Except I’m learning Mandarin at the moment and I’m not very good at that, so I might not pick it up very— uh— but this isn’t about me, so, yeah. Please just sign if it’s easier. No need to translate for my sake.”

“We run the meetings bilingually, anyway, and maybe you can pick up a few signs as we do,” Karen said with a smile, before turning her attention away from him. “So, Caitlin, tell us a bit more about yourself.”

* * *

An hour passed, then Chris exchanged numbers with George, who knew someone who was offering ASL lessons on a discounted price to Samwell students, and waited whilst Caitlin added everyone on Facebook and to her phone. There was a skip in her step as they walked back out of the library.

“What did you think?” She asked after a minute’s quiet.

Chris blinked at her in surprise. “I mean, it was for you. I thought it was good! Everyone is really nice! But it was for you, so it’s more important what you think.”

“Yeah. I liked them. I mean, though, do you think you’re going to try and find out when the Trans Community meet?”

“Oh!” Chris shrugged, and thought about it quickly. “I guess? I know Nursey’s been to a few things like that. Black Student Alliance, and a Muslim Association and he and Holster went to some thing for both Jewish and Muslim people. They seem to get into it. And that was more relaxed than I expected. Not just… sitting around and talking about issues, you know? Building up relationships as well.”

She nodded encouragingly.

“Maybe it is a good idea. I’ll look into it, maybe.”

* * *

With the next Trans at Samwell gathering in his mental calendar for Monday, Chris turned his focus back to deciding classes. He had to take his second module of Chinese in order to get the credit, and he had confirmed the Chemistry class with Caitlin. Then, he had two more classes to choose, but was struggling to decide what he wanted to do. On Wednesday he categorically ruled out Linguistics after an introductory lecture which both hurt his brain and sent him to sleep, then spent half of a WGSS class that Shitty had recommended feeling incredibly uncomfortable, until he ended up slipping out early. Perhaps studying gender in an academic way wasn’t the best idea, all things considered. His final class of that day was a Geography one, but the moment he saw the paper schedule he knew that it would be impossible to manage around hockey. After frog lunch on Thursday, Chris and Nursey said goodbye to Dex, who was going to fix the oven in the Haus again, and headed off to a class on International Ethics, which Chris hoped would prove to be more of a success.

“This is going to be a load of books,” he commented as Nursey swiped them into his dorm block two hours later. It had been interesting, but he had no idea how they were supposed to get through so much reading.

Nursey looked at him out the corner of his eye. “Ch’yeah. That's the point.”

“I know, but…” Chris trailed off into a whine, then a hesitant “Oh,” when he had got through the door to his friends’ suite and saw Dex on the sofa with Caitlin.

“Hi, sweetie,” Caitlin said with a smile.

“Uh, are you two catching up? Do you want us to go again and give you some family time, or—”

“It’s okay, Chris. Will and I both had a bit of free time, so we came back here to look at some photos I found over break and reminisce. You can join us.”

Chris hesitated, unsure if the offer was genuine, but Nursey just walked over to them looking interested. “Photos? Do these photos include awkward pre-teen Dex?” He jumped onto the couch next to Dex and looked down at the computer. “Damn, Farmer. You're the fucking image of your mom and Dex's, aren't you?” He looked up at Chris, who was still hovering in the doorway. “Seriously, C, come look, it's creepy.”

Slowly, Chris moved to perch the other side of Caitlin and look at the picture on Dex's screen. There were three adults and four children who were all about four or five years old. Chris wasn’t sure where to start picking apart who all the children were — only Dex was instantly recognizable — so he started with the adults. The man, who was crouched to the same level as the children and had his arms around the two boys, was clearly a Poindexter with his distinctively large ears. His hair was the same sandy tone as the boy Chris decided must be Dex’s brother: Dan, he recalled. The two women standing behind them were similar in looks, though they wore their brown hair differently and had contrasting fashion senses. Nursey was right in saying they looked like Caitlin did now, but he wasn’t sure which of the girls she could be. Neither of them looked particularly familiar.

Chris glanced at Dex, curiously. Was he actually going to talk about this now? “You didn't know you were both going to be here,” he said to test the waters. “At Samwell.”

“We hadn't seen each other since we were about ten. We didn't even have each other on Facebook,” Dex told him. “And even before that… I mean, Caity lived in San Bernardino and I lived in Portland. You don’t get much more distance between two people and them both still be in the contiguous States.”

“San Bernardino?” Chris repeated, his head tilting as far down as he could manage with Caitlin’s head resting on his shoulder.

“Where my momma used to live.” She sat up straight and exchanged a look with Dex, before turning back to Chris. “Want to hear a story?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't obvious, next chapter is going to get preeetty heavy.


	14. The Farmers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Chris was struggling to choose his classes. Meanwhile, he supported Caitlin at a Deaf Support Group, and resolved to go to a Trans at Samwell meeting. The first Thursday of the class shopping period he and Nursey leave an Ethics class and go back to Nursey and Dex's suite. There they find Caitlin and Dex reminiscing together, and Caitlin asks if they want to hear a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have a 8k+ word chapter about William J Poindexter.
> 
>  **Content/Trigger Warnings**  
>  Symptoms of the following are present:  
> \- Anxiety  
> \- PTSD  
> \- OCD  
> Plus, mentions of:  
> \- Panic Attacks  
> \- Doctor's//Diagnoses  
> \- Family death (multiple family members)  
> \- Cancer  
> \- Car accident  
> \- Pregnancy, both planned and unplanned  
> \- Foster care  
> \- Sex (no explicit content)

Chris watched Dex warily, waiting for him to crumble and close up again. It was hard to believe, at any rate, that he was suddenly feeling ready to talk, after months of keeping his life before Samwell under wraps. Nobody objected, though, so Caitlin carried on speaking.

“We haven’t heard this story since we were eleven, so if it gets a bit messy and we miss stuff out, we’re sorry. But you should make sure you’re sitting comfortably because the tale of the Farmer family history is a long one.”

Dex rolled his eyes. “They don't need our family history.”

“Don't be a killjoy, Billy. It starts, of course, with two sisters.” Caitlin pointed at the two women on the laptop screen in turn. “Helen and Rachel Farmer weren’t quite the inseparable sisters that some people expected them to be, but—”

“Cait.  _ Seriously?  _ You don’t need to go through all that. Our moms were sisters. Her mom moved from Maine to L.A. Then we were born. Fast-forward to—”

“Oh, but you’ve missed out the bit where she stayed at Samwell! There’s so much more to it than  _ she moved to L.A _ . God. That’s not even fucking accurate.”

Dex did a double take. “Oh my God, did you just  _ swear?” _

“I’m nineteen, William. Older than you, remember? Which is why we’re telling this story properly, because I said so.”

“They don’t even care.”

Chris frowned. “I care.”

Dex huffed, but Caitlin looked delighted. “Great!” she said. “So, our moms were close, just very different from each other. When they had both finished high school, those differences became more obvious and Rachel couldn’t help but feel like she was being left behind more than the year between them should have allowed. Helen was newly married, and content with the thought of settling into a housewife role rather than searching for a job. Meanwhile, Rachel was dealing with family members telling her that she was naive to want to be a film director, and constantly asking her whether she had a boyfriend yet, because didn’t her sister look so happy with Luke Poindexter?”

“That Poindexter guy.” They all turned to Dex when he cut in. “They always said that Poindexter guy. Because he was a weird out-a-stater.”

“Weird out-of-state  _ Protestant _ ,” Caitlin agreed with a nod. “Rachel was sick of it. One night, she packed her bags after her parents had gone to bed and she left. That first night, she only went down the road, to a friend’s house. That friend was visiting home from one Samwell University, so Rachel went back there with her.  _ Here.  _ She stayed for a couple of nights, pretending to be a student, reveling in the nightlife, and even going to a hockey game. She mourned the fact that it was just a lie. Even if she didn’t really want to go to college, Samwell seemed like a good a place as any to do it. For then, though, she had her eyes set on other places. It took her nearly two weeks to get to Los Angeles, hitching rides with truckers, and she was feeling a little worse for wear when she did, so the first thing she did was go to mass. There she met a man called Oscar Moreno. When he heard she had nowhere to stay, he offered her the bed in his apartment and though I’m totally sure he had good intentions to be a good Catholic and take the couch—”

“Wait,” Dex interrupted again, this time sounding confused. “That’s not what they said.”

“I know what they said, but I did the math and they totally had sex, like,  _ straight away, _ no matter how much mom always tried to make it sound like they’d known each other longer before anything happened.”

Color rose in Dex’s cheeks and he forced out “Oh. Okay,” in a strangled voice.

Caitlin shrugged and carried on. “So Moreno offered to Rachel that she stay at his apartment for a while, telling her that she could look for somebody to live with if she wanted, but that she should have somewhere to crash until she found something. But their relationship ended up crashing and burning, and reality hit that she was on the wrong end of the country with not much cash and only experience in low paying jobs. She ended up getting a friend of a friend to hook her up with a place to stay, over in San Bernardino and life was pretty shit. Then she found out she was pregnant. She rang Moreno about it and suddenly he wanted to know again. He was offering to have her back at his and they could raise the baby together. She told him she was keeping the baby anyway and if he wanted to be a part of— well, a part of  _ my  _ life, he could be, but he could get lost if he thought she was going to lose her independence over it.” There was a long pause and then she nudged Dex. “It's your go.”

Dex ran a finger under his collar. “Oh. Uh. My mom was pregnant with Dan, too. Uh, so yeah, he was born.” Dex sighed when Caitlin shot him a look. He backtracked in a dull tone. “Right. _Right._ Mom had been very distressed when her sister had disappeared. As she was eighteen, the authorities wouldn’t rule it a priority case, and by the time they started looking, they got about as far as figuring out that she had crossed state borders of her own volition, and refused to push it further. Then, out of the blue, Aunt Rachel rang. Mom begged her to come back, and told her that she was going to be an aunt. Aunt Rachel promised that she would go and visit when she had her next paycheck, but said she didn't want to face their parents and their disapproval. Three weeks later, she was on my parents’ doorstep.”

Dex looked to Caitlin, who glanced back, as if she wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. Chris wondered for a moment if she had forgotten the next bit of the story but then Dex let out a laugh. “At this point in the story Aunt Rachel always prodded Caitlin in the tummy and made a comment about her baby bump. Which was always great because she did—” he dug his fingers into her stomach and she let out a high-pitched squeal. “That. Every time. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Shut up,” she grumbled, swatting at his hand.

Dex grinned at her, but there was anxiety in his eyes, and a pallor to his already light skin. He pulled on the cuffs of his shirt awkwardly, and scratched at an invisible mark on his jeans. “Can we skip on a bit, now,  _ please _ ? Or just. Talk about something else.”

She considered it, and looked at Chris, then nodded. “There’s not much to say about the years after that, anyway. They always just liked taking the time to reminisce and bring out embarrassing stories of when we were little. We might as well skip on, but I'm afraid it means moving past the end of the story as they told it, and turning their happily ever after ending into tragedy.” She swallowed, stealing herself before carrying on. "So, Danny was born just a week after me, and only a few months later, Auntie Helen was pregnant again, but we didn’t see her at all in that time. My mom only went back up to Bar Harbor once with me to visit them when they were in the premature baby unit with Will and Jess. When they were healthy enough, the Poindexters moved down to Portland so we went there or they came down to California."

Nursey spoke up for the first time, making Chris jump. He had almost forgotten he was there. "Who's Jess?"

Caitlin sucked in a breath as if she hadn't realized she had said the name at all. Dex moved his hand from adjusting the computer onto her wrist, and answered, "My twin sister." There was something in his tone that lowered Chris's mood, but then Caitlin was clearing her throat and talking again, her voice strained, now. Her and Dex’s hands slid until their fingers were entangled.

"Right, so anyway, there was me and my momma living in San Bernardino, and then one weekend each month and a load of time in holidays I was going over to Malibu to visit my dad, along with my now-stepmom and step-sister after they had moved in with him. Meanwhile Will lived way over on the other side of the country in Maine. We didn't get a lot of chance to see each other. It was maybe once a year, if we were lucky, and money worked out right. Our moms were close enough, though, especially after Grandma and Grandad Farmer died, that they made an effort."

She sighed, and Dex echoed the sound, then squeezed her hand. "Aunt Rachel was diagnosed with breast cancer when we were in fifth grade,” he told them, his voice soft despite the blunt delivery. “Mom didn’t actually tell us for ages. She just told us that her and dad would be working extra hard to try and raise enough to go to California in the Summer. They were really upset when they told us it would have to be Christmas instead.”

“She died in September,” Caitlin finished. A silence dragged on, then she pulled her head away from where it had come to rest on Chris’s shoulder to look at Dex. “Will? Are you going to—”

“There’s nothing more to say.”

She sat up and stared at him. “You’re still not going to tell me what happened with you? I need to know, Will. You can’t just shrug it off and say— You— I mean, at the Epikegster when you said— What  _ happened?” _

Chris felt a tightness in his chest as he looked at the tears brimming in Dex’s eyes.

He took a few seconds to breathe before talking. “We couldn’t go to the funeral, and they never booked any flights out at Christmas, now Cait’d be spending the time with her dad. Then the next summer… It was this rare day when neither of my parents had to work and we were driving out to some trail somewhere. But on the highway, this car...”

Chris squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to look at the haunted look that was now on Dex’s face. When the end of the sentence never came, he breathed out, “I’m sorry.” His words seemed to remind Dex that he had been part way through the explanation.

“It was that old car we had. No airbags, and no seat belt for the middle of the back. The— the crash was… Me and Dan got away with whiplash, but Mom and Dad-” Dex’s voice was so quiet now, that if they hadn’t all shifted closer together on the sofa, practically cuddling, Chris wouldn’t have heard him, but he kept talking as if he had opened a box which could never be closed again. “And then- Jess and I had argued that morning over who would go in the middle. Neither of us wanted to because you don’t get proper leg space. I deliberately picked a fight with Dan so that Mom and Dad would say she had to go in between us.”

“ _ Will,”  _ Nursey said, and the use of Dex’s first name surprised Chris so much that he jerked a little too suddenly next to Caitlin, who let out a moan of discontent. “It’s not your fault.”

“She  _ should have been fine.  _ We didn’t really get the impact in the back, but she— She went through the windshield. I—” Dex was shaking so much that Chris could feel it through Caitlin’s body. He reached around her to find his friend’s hand and grip onto it. It was clammy with sweat. On his other side, Nursey was making a reassuring shushing noise as he rubbed his hand up and down Dex’s back.

“Where did you go?” Caitlin asked, quietly. “Poindexter grandparents?”

Dex bit his lip and shook his head, now staring at his knees. “They weren’t in a state to look after us. They went into a care home, and when we came out the hospital, Dan and I went straight into the foster care system.”

“How did—”

“Cait. Can we not do this? I haven’t had to tell that story since social services made me just after it had happened. Can we just stop talking about it now?”

Caitlin turned her face into Chris’s shirt, and Chris caught Dex’s eye over her head. Red-faced, and with splotchy cheeks, Dex averted his eyes, but Chris tightened his grip on his hand, then let go so that he could open up his arms.

After a second’s hesitation, the four of them became a tangle of limbs, leaning in each other’s arms. Chris was suddenly overwhelmed with the weight of the story that had just been recounted to him. He pressed his lips into Caitlin’s hair again, and shifted so that his side was flush against Dex’s, and Caitlin was curled in his lap. Nursey sandwiched Dex from the other side, and his arm, wrapped around Dex’s middle, was pressed into Chris’s waist.

A few long minutes passed in silence; body contact their only form of comfort now that nobody really knew what else could be said. Chris rubbed his hand down Caitlin’s arm.

“Hey,” he breathed. “Do you want me to walk you back to your dorm? Or you can come round to mine or we can go to SuperBerry. I mean… If you want to stay here, that’s fine! It really is, I just think-” He shot a look over at his teammates, hoping they weren't offended by his quick getaway, or disgruntled that he was picking his girlfriend to comfort before Dex, but the only indication that they had heard what he had said was Dex lifting his head from Chris’s shoulder so that he could get up.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I need to curl up in a bed with froyo right now.” Caitlin looked over at Nursey and Dex, too, as she stood. “See you guys later?”

Nursey nodded, but his attention wasn’t on the two of them as they left the suite. Dex’s head was in his hands, now, and Nursey’s fingers massaged the back of his neck. Chris and Caitlin shared a long look in which they silently agreed to not talk about anything more until they had got to SuperBerry, whether it be the history he had just heard, or Nursey comforting Dex, or even the classes they had been to earlier. Instead, Chris pulled Caitlin into his side and peppered her temple with kisses.

* * *

Only when they were curled up on his bed, empty froyo tubs abandoned on the floor, did Chris hook a finger under Caitlin’s chin and gently whisper, “How are you doing?”

“I— He told me bits of that already, so I was expecting— but he was so— I don’t even know. He didn’t want to talk about it, and I get that, you know? Reliving my momma’s death is bad enough, and he— Shit, Chris. He was  _ there.  _ Do you think he has PTSD or something?”

Chris chewed on his lips. “I don’t know enough about it.”

She hummed quietly. “I— I think I’m going to message him and check he’s seen a professional about it.”

Chris nodded and pushed his shoulders back into his pillow so that she had more room to lean across for her phone. When she was done, she lay her head down on his chest and traced the shark on his top. “Tell me about your classes?” she asked. Chris was happy to comply.

* * *

The weekend brought their first roadie of 2015. Chris saw the way that Dex circled the bus with a critical eye in a new way: not just checking everything was in order from the point of view of a former garage employee, but also with the paranoia of someone worried something was definitely going to be wrong with it. Nursey and Chris waited outside with him, chirping each other to keep the attention away from Dex as their teammates boarded the bus.

“You cold, bro?” Nursey asked with a smirk. His varsity jacket was hanging open to reveal a shirt and tie underneath, and he had only a gilet as an extra layer. Chris, meanwhile, was wearing a shirt and hoodie under both his jackets, a coat over the top, and could still feel the cold.

“It’s January!” he said, in defense of himself.

“It is January,” Dex agreed, stepping up to the door to the bus. “It’s okay, C, we know you’re not used to this weather.”

Nursey narrowed his eyes towards Dex, briefly, and muttered, “suck-up.”

“And we don’t want anybody to get sick,” Dex continued, giving Chris a nudge so that he went up into the bus.

“No, we don’t! But Shitty wasn’t wearing a jacket at all, did you see?”

Dex stepped to the side to let Nursey take the window seat, and then raised an eyebrow at Chris. “Maybe he’s got it in his bag.”

“But it’s  _ cold.  _ He needs it now! Why doesn’t he need it now? He never wears jackets enough.” He threw his bag onto the seat across the aisle from Dex and Nursey, and went to sit down on the row behind, leaning over the top of his seat to look at Bitty and Lardo. “Bitty, why does Shitty never wear a jacket?” he asked. Lardo snorted.

From across the aisle, Shitty called, “I don’t need a jacket!”

“Does his mustache keep him warm?” Chris continued, trying to keep a straight face. The choking sound from where Nursey was sitting made him sit down in his seat so that he could crack a grin.

“Hey! Don’t sass the stache, Chow. Jack, tell him.”

“Sure thing, Shits,” Jack said, but he didn’t look up from his hockey play sketches.

“Fuck’s sake, Nurse,” Dex whined, then he twisted round in his seat. “Nursey just spilled soda everywhere.”

* * *

As roadies went, it was a decent one. Though Nursey had to borrow some of Dex’s pants for press on the Saturday, thanks to his own soda-stained ones, and though their Friday evening game was a disappointing one, Jack’s hatty against Union on Saturday made up for it. They arrived back in Samwell late Sunday evening, tired out but content in the camaraderie of team spirit.

“You’re not allowed to be tired, C,” Dex told him, suppressing his own yawn in response to Chris’s. “You got your own room, you lucky bugger.”

“Only because Lardo likes going in with Bitty!” Chris hastened to explain. Truthfully, Lardo had been rigging the room allocations all year in Chris’s favor, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Dex.

“Nah, it’s because you’re Bitty’s favorite,” Dex said, letting a second yawn out properly.

“What’s your excuse then? It’s not like you’re not used to sharing a room with Nursey. Did he really keep you up that much?”

“He’s  _ awful  _ the night before games,” Dex said, a pink tinge to his cheeks. “Snoring and everything.”

“I don’t snore!” Nursey shouted across Ransom and Holster’s heads from where he was walking with Jell-O.

“How would you know?” Dex retorted. “You’re always asleep when you’re doing it.”

He and Chris stepped to the side to let Ransom and Holster pass and fell into step with Nursey who was clearly struggling to come up with a response to that logic. “Well— Well you can talk Mr Squeaky Mattress.”

Chris let out a surprised squeak. “Oh my God.” He looked over at Dex, who was bright red but raising an eyebrow at Nursey.

“He fidgets!” Nursey rushed to explain, as he caught the double entendre of his words. Chris choked out a laugh. “He can’t sleep still, I—  _ Guys _ ,” Nursey trailed off with a whine, because Chris and Dex were now holding onto each other’s arms to stop themselves doubling over with laughter.

* * *

It was the last week to decide their classes for the semester, and Chris still had one class to pick, assuming he confirmed the Ethics class with Nursey. He was probably going to, just because choosing his classes was turning out to be a lot more difficult this semester than the first. Dex was trying to persuade him to take another Computer Science course with him, which he knew would be an easy grade, but Chris didn’t know how to explain why he was hesitating.

“I don’t want to be following in my—” He cut himself off mid-explanation. Dex’s face was still contorted into confusion, and he didn’t seem to notice where the rest of that sentence was going, so Chris shrugged and finished, “It just feels like I’m conforming to a stereotype. Especially if I do it just because I’m good at it and not because I enjoy it.”

Dex’s frown deepened. “I thought you did enjoy it.”

“I— Not really? I don’t know. I  _ get  _ it. I enjoyed it for a bit. But then it just stopped being fun when I realized I’m never going to want a job in computing.” He pursed his lips and looked back down at the shortlist of courses Ransom had gathered for him, using a complicated spreadsheet which ruled out anything which he couldn’t take because of clashes with other classes, hockey, or prerequisites for the course. “Maybe I’ll try one of the Politics intro classes? Politics could be fun.”

“Yeah,” Dex sighed, and immediately Chris felt bad. Rather than any signs of relief at having taken some weight off his shoulders, Dex had been looking more and more despondent since telling the story about his family, and Chris hoped he wasn’t regretting it.

“I'll think about it, okay? It's not until Wednesday, right? I've been struggling with this semester’s classes so maybe I'll take it with you.”

* * *

Going to the Trans at Samwell group that evening provided a much needed distraction from Chris’s growing worry about Dex. He could push aside Caitlin’s suggestion of him having PTSD, and the way that opening up had only made Dex appear more easily perturbed. Chris had spent much of the break between the end of his Politics and Caitlin’s Anthropology classes trying to decide if the conversation had brought Dex’s real feelings and anxieties to the surface, or whether he was just better at noticing them now that he understood. Nursey had told him to chill, and that it would be fine, but before he could give any explanation as to why he was so certain, they had been interrupted by Ransom and Holster descending on them to let them know that if they wanted cookies from the Haus they would have to run because they were nearly all gone.

So, Chris welcomed the opportunity to think about other things, and to focus on himself as he made new friends. When it grew late, though, and he dragged his attention away from Zach and Peyton from the swim team to the text that Caitlin was waiting outside for him, his thoughts snapped straight back to her cousin.

“It was really great to meet you!” he told his new friends, who grinned back. “I have early practice, though, so—” He trailed off with a shrug, and Zach checked his watch.

“Sure thing. See you in a couple of weeks?”

“Okay! Yeah!”

Outside, Chris apologized to Caitlin for what must have been the third time. “Sorry for not taking you with me. I thought— I don’t know.”

“It’s fine. I get it. It’s your safe place, not mine. Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah,” he said, but even he could hear the lack of enthusiasm that would normally be in his voice on answering a question like that. Caitlin squeezed his hand.

“Did something happen?”

“No! No, nothing like that. I just keep thinking— Can we go and check on Dex?”

She tensed, and Chris immediately felt guilty.

“Not that I think anything has happened! He just was upset this morning, but other than that he’s not really been acknowledging that he told us anything? Except on the bus at the weekend, sort of, he didn’t try and hide at least to me and Nursey that he was nervous, but I don’t know! I just want to check he’s okay.”

“Okay, but it’s pretty late now, and I wanted to- Never mind. That’s not important. Maybe we should text ahead so that he’s expecting us, and to check he’s not going to bed or anything.”

It was only half past ten, so it was unlikely that Dex was ready for bed already, even with their a.m. practice the next day, but Caitlin had a good point. Turning up unexpectedly probably wouldn’t help, especially if Dex had any homework to be doing. He could sometimes be a little prickly when people interrupted his work.

> Frog Group Chat  
>  _ Chris  
>  _ Hey! Are you guys still up? Mind if me and Cait come hang out for a bit?
> 
> __ Nursey  
>  er  
>  dex is doing homework  
>  i just finished but I took a sleeping pill which will kick in t-30mins  
>  you can if you want it’s chill  
>  but he’s in a real zone right now

Chris frowned and switched over to his private messages with Nursey.

> __ Chris  
>  I just wanted to check on him really?  
>  He’s been a bit off recently
> 
> __ Nursey  
>  oh!  
>  he’s dealing with it, promise.
> 
> _ Chris  
>  _ What does that mean?
> 
> _ Nursey  
>  _ just trust me?  
>  night<3

 “Hey, sweetie, it’s okay,” Caitlin told him, in a soothing voice. She took his phone out of his hand and put it away in his hoodie pocket, then took a hold of his hand and pulled him towards his dorm. “Let’s not worry about it tonight.”

“Easier said than done,” he pointed out.

“I know.”

Chris sighed and let her pull him a few feet before he realized what he had almost missed earlier. “What did you want to do? When you said-”

Immediately, a blush spread across her face.”I—” She took a couple of breaths, and prepared herself before looking him in the eye and pulling her shoulders back with a bout of confidence. “I wanted to talk about sex. If you’re ready, that is. To talk about it.”

Chris’s mind blacked out for a second. “We should probably get back to my dorm then,” he said, and it took all his effort to keep his voice steady. Her cheeks darkened even more. With a tug of her hand, and smiles cracking across their faces, they set off running.

* * *

Nursey sidled up to Chris halfway through practice. “Did you stop worrying then?”

Chris kept his eye on where Jack, Wagner, and Hardy were passing the puck between them even as he answered, “Huh?”

“Last night you were worried about Dex, but this morning you seem over it. You were your usual happy self coming in. Happier than usual, actually.”

Chris felt his cheeks warm slightly. “Oh. Right. Is he okay?”

“Yeah. I mean… Ask him yourself.” Nursey frowned. “Are  _ you  _ okay?”

“I’m great!” Chris replied, perfectly truthfully, but Nursey was immediately up in his face, looking at him searchingly.

“Something happened.”

“I can’t see the puck!”

“C, C, C, C,” Nursey said, patting him repeatedly.

“Goalie interference!”

“C,” Nursey whined again. “Deets.”

“I’m not giving you deets,” Chris hissed back before pushing Nursey to the side so that he had a better view of the scuffle happening between Wagner and Dex. “And aren’t you supposed to be having your d-man’s back right now?”

“Bro. But there  _ are  _ deets, aren’t there?”

“Nurse! Why the hell aren’t you over here?” Dex shouted down the rink.

“Fuck.” Nursey pushed off from the goal, throwing a, “Happy for you, bro!” over his shoulder on his way to help Dex out. There was a sappy smile on Chris face as he shook his head after his friend.

* * *

At Wednesday’s team breakfast Dex sat opposite Chris and faced him with a grin.

“Did you decide about Computer Science? You really should take it! It’s going to be great. There’s loads of new things in this class, that we haven’t done in AP. Starting to incorporate some Electrical Engineering, you know?”

“Oh. Uh. I’m really sorry, Dex. I think I’m going to take Politics instead.”

Dex’s face fell. “C…”

“I’m sorry! I just— It’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to keep doing more Computer Science classes.”

“This one’s different! It’s basically Computer Engineering.”

“I know, but I just- I don’t want to. I’m sorry. You should still take it, though!” Chris said.

Dex piled his empty breakfast bowl onto his plate with care. “Yeah.”

Chris dropped his voice so that the rest of the team wouldn’t hear. “Hey. Are you okay? You don’t need me with you, right?”

“Sure. I just— I liked doing that class with you. And you’re still doing a class with Nursey, and one with Cait.”

“It’s not you,” Chris told him with a frown. “That’s just how it worked out. Those are the classes I wanted to do. What else are you doing? Maybe I could do something else with you instead of Politics.”

“L5 Spanish, that Physics one with the Calculus prerequisite, and a writing seminar. For the credit.”

Chris’s mouth turned down in disappointment. The first two were courses he knew he couldn’t take, and he still hoped to get his writing credits in later years via more interesting classes than a seminar designed for students who didn’t want to take any of the other qualifying courses. “Maybe we’ll get to do a class together next year instead,” he said. “It’s not like we can do everything together. You— I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. No, it’s okay. I— You’re right. I just— You’re better at it than I am.”

Chris shook his head. “That’s not true.” Perhaps by their final scores he had done a little better, but Chris refused to really believe that. “You’re really good at it, Dex. You can do it without  _ me,  _ definitely.”

Dex’s lips tightened into an uncertain twist. “Sure?”

“Of course I am. But if you don’t want to—”

“No, I do, I just— You’re my best friend, C. You’re the best friend I’ve had since Jess.”

One look at the tears shining in Dex’s eyes and Chris felt himself getting choked up. “Oh. Oh, I—” He shook his head, and wrapped his arms around Dex’s neck in lieu of searching for the right words to say.

“I’m sorry,” Dex muttered into his neck. “It’s just… been a difficult week.”

“I know. But thank-you for trusting me with all of this? You’re my best friend too. You have been for months. Or you and Nursey tied, at least! Because I don’t think I can choose between you?”

Dex cracked a smile as they pulled apart from the hug. “I can live with being tied for best.”

“Okay! But I mean it, you’re my best friend but there’s a lot I didn’t really know? And even now— I mean, it’s not like best friends have to tell each other everything, is it?” Chris hoped not, anyway, or he would have to say he was closer to Nursey given the fact that he had yet to come out to Dex. “But I’m really happy you felt like you could tell me this. And even if I still don’t know when your birthday is, I understand now why you don’t like it.”

“I haven’t celebrated it since—”

“No.”

“But it’s August 13th.”

When the date connected in Chris’s mind, he frowned. “That was—”  _ Their second day at Samwell. _

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry we missed it.”

“I’m not,” Dex said. His voice cracked. “I— Chris…”

“Yes?”

Something in Dex’s eye suggested that he was debating whether to say something, but he appeared to change his mind at the last second. “Thanks.”

* * *

It wasn’t until the next day that Dex brought up again the conversation they had shared the week before. Chris was partway through his now-confirmed Chemistry seminar with Caitlin when their phones went off. He ignored it, more focused on trying to decipher the complicated diagram the professor was talking about, but Caitlin checked her messages under the desk.

“It's Will,” she whispered, holding it out for Chris to read.

> **Group Text** (Will Poindexter, Chris Chow  & 3 more...)
> 
> _ Can we meet at Jerry’s after class? 12 o’clock? I need to talk to you. _

 They shared a worried look, and Chris nodded to indicated that he was happy to postpone their planned lunchdate to see what Dex wanted.

* * *

Nursey was already there, sipping on an iced coffee through a straw while he tapped at his phone. Caitlin headed to the counter to order them some food while Chris slid in opposite his teammate.

“Hey. Did Dex text you?” Chris asked.

Nursey nodded.

“Any idea what it's about?”

He shrugged. “I might have an idea but I'm not a hundred percent sure.”

He didn't look worried so Chris let himself relax a bit. Caitlin came over with two lattes and sat next to him.

“I got you the tuna melt. It'll be a few minutes.”

“Ordering for each other, that's a fine,” Nursey said without even looking up from his phone. Chris ignored him in favor of thanking Caitlin with a kiss.

Dex arrived at the same time as the grilled sandwiches, but muttered that they should wait for “the others”. A few minutes later, the door opened again for Jack, Ransom and Holster.

“What's up, Poindexter?” Holster asked as he pulled up an extra chair.

“Are we waiting for anyone else?” Chris asked, a little confused by the group that was already there.

“Uh, no, just you guys. I—” He swallowed and looked down at his hands, which were playing with a salt shaker. At least a minute passed in silence.

“Are we going to talk about how Chowder brought his girlfriend?” Ransom asked. Chris jumped and turned to him, but recognized from his expression that the question was an attempt to break the tension.

“I invited her. She's my cousin. You're the one who brought Holster.” Dex raised an eyebrow but he visibly relaxed.

“Okay we're coming back to the fact that Chowder’s dating Dex's cousin and it's never come up before,” Holster said. “But for now do you want me to go?”

“No, I figured you’d come too. It's okay. I just— my focus was the people I needed to know and the people who have some sort of experience with this.”

Chris cleared his throat. “What, uh, what exactly  _ is  _ this? Sorry! I don't want to rush you or anything but you haven't said and— sorry.”

Will shook his head but he frowned down at the table, lips pressed together. 

“So you went to the doctor's,” Nursey prompted. Chris choked on his sandwich and from the reactions around the table, he wasn't the only one who wasn’t expecting that.

“Oh my God! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I… I went to the doctor's. I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“Woah,  _ what?”  _ Ransom leaned forward abruptly.

“Yeah. I, uh, it's from a car crash I was in? When I was eleven?”

Caitlin reached across the table to take his hand. “I'm glad you saw someone.”

“I, uh—” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I also have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”

“Oh.” Nursey stared at the sauces in the middle of the table that Dex had lined up while he was talking. Chris thought about how it had always seemed like Dex just couldn't keep his hands still and that was why he played with things but he did always leave those things lined up neatly, labels facing the same way. Even his pre-game ritual - though he would never concede to having one - involved everything being tidy. Chris was certain that OCD was more than that, though, and he had just opened his mouth to ask when Dex spoke again.

“And we talked about my panic attacks.”

Nursey knocked over his glass. Chris didn’t understand the look Dex gave him as he put it upright again. 

“You have panic attacks?” Caitlin asked.

Dex glanced at Nursey again out of the corner of his eye before he nodded. Nursey was still staring at the spilled drink and noticed nothing. “Just a few. It took me a while to realize that's what they were, and it can just be a symptom, you know? Of the PTSD. But not all the times I've had them have been because of that, or triggered by memories of that so we talked about them and she said it might be panic disorder or it might be other anxiety building up so much because I've got two other anxiety disorders and sometimes they can conflict with each other? Because my OCD makes me want to put everything in boxes but I can't box up my feelings if they seem irrational because they're responses to something that happened six and a half years ago. And maybe we need to monitor it and see if there's some general anxiety more than just what's common for… Well, for my situation.”

“So what now?” Ransom asked as Chris pulled some napkins out of the dispenser on the table to mop up the iced coffee. It didn’t look like Nursey was going to help.

“I've been given a daily prescription and another for when my anxiety is feeling out of control. I told them I can’t afford therapy, so they’re saying to see the school counselors instead.”

He glanced at Jack, who still hadn’t spoken.

“I'm sorry if— I just thought you should know.”

“It's fine. You did the right thing in letting people know. Tell us if there's anything you need from us and if you're not supposed to drink with the meds, don't risk it.”

Chris resisted the urge to look at Nursey. Dex nodded. “Okay.”

“Yeah, bro, whatever you need,” Holster added solemnly. “Dexy patrol at kegsters or coral reef preservation or anything. We've got your back.”

Chris nodded, even though he wasn’t completely sure what he could do to help.

Finally, Nursey cleared his throat. “So, uh, what does it mean? The OCD? I mean, obviously, you leave everything clean, but that’s not— I mean— You don’t even have pre-game rituals.”

Dex made a noise halfway between a snort and an awkward cough. “If this is your way of trying to win a bet we made four months ago, Nurse, you can forget it.”

Chris frowned. “No, but really, Dex. If there’s anything we need to know. Anything you have to do that we can help you with—”

Dex’s cheeks colored. “Thanks, C. I— The rituals aren’t the deal, okay? Keeping things tidy. Making things work. Making things perfect. That just helps me to shut up what’s going on in my head for a little bit. It’s what’s up there that made the diagnosis, not what I do.” He chewed on his lips. “I don’t have pre-game rituals because if I didn’t do them whatever it is that would go wrong isn’t losing the match. That’s not how it works. It’s... this one thing isn’t perfect, so some huge catastrophe is going to happen.” He squeezed his eyes closed with such force that Chris wondered what sort of ‘catastrophe’ he was envisaging. “I try not to let myself create more things that have to go a certain way. It doesn’t always work but I try.”

“Dude,” Ransom breathed. There was a long silence.

“I’m proud of you,” Nursey said, abruptly. He stood, ruffling Dex’s hair as he did. “I need another drink. Anyone else?”

“That’s okay. I have a class in ten minutes,” Ransom said, with a look to his watch. “Are you okay if we go, Dex? You’ll text us if you need anything else? And we can talk some more just me and you, later, if you want, too?”

Dex nodded, and Ransom and Holster headed out of the diner. Jack stood, as well. “I need to go, too. If, um—” He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “If you want to talk, I know a bit about perfectionism. And panic attacks. Maybe in a different way, but um, hockey, for how to deal with games which didn’t go well—”

“Thanks, Jack,” Dex said.

Jack looked a little relieved when he turned to go, but he paused a couple of steps away from the booth and turned to add, “Bittle might be a good person to talk to, as well. Just so you know.”

“Bitty?” Dex asked. There was surprise in his voice, but the more Chris thought about it, the more obvious it seemed, given the troubles with checking earlier in the year. In case he was either completely off-base, or it was something Bitty didn’t want people to know, however, he kept quiet.

Nursey sat back down and bumped his shoulder against Dex's so that he scooted over to sit across from Chris. The four of them stayed wrapped in their own thoughts for a moment, only the slurping of Nursey’s iced tea and the chatter of other tables for background noise. Nursey and Dex’s phones went off simultaneously.

“You not in the group chat any more, C?” Nursey asked, prodding at his phone screen without bothering to pick it up off the table.

“My phone’s on silent. I’ll look at my messages later.” He dropped his arm behind Caitlin’s shoulders.

“Yeah, Nursey, stop being antisocial,” Dex said, with a nudge of his elbow. Nursey didn’t look up from his phone to flip Dex off. Chris watched as Dex dropped his eyes down to the table, rubbed his hands together nervously, then looked back up, eyes widening when they locked onto Chris.

“Are you— I mean. It’s never fun being told that there’s something wrong with you. Not that it’s wrong to have mental health issues! Just— You know, they’re still illnesses, and are you okay?”

“Yeah. I probably should have known.”

“No! You don’t have to— It’s not like you’re a psychiatrist. How would you know?”

“Something had to be wrong, C. I— I just avoided it because I thought the worst thing would be to be one of those kids who had to see a therapist every week. We were already so close to ending up in a Specialized Home and that would have pushed us into it.”

Chris bit on his lip, and stared at the table between them. He didn’t understand enough about the Foster Care system or what Dex was saying to be able to comment on it, so he settled for saying, “Well I’m glad you’ve seen someone about it now.” Next to him, Chris felt Caitlin’s phone vibrate and he glanced across as she took it out to read the incoming text from March, before flickering his eyes back to Dex. “Seriously, I’m really proud of you.”

Dex went pink. “C…”

“You’re getting help. That’s good. It takes a lot to admit when you need help. You want a hug?”

“We’re not hugging over the table.”

Chris pretended to pout, and was happy to see that he had drawn a smile from Dex. “But I was worried about you so now I want to hug you, Dex.”

“Can we just talk about something else now?” Dex said, the hint of a laugh playing on his lips.

“Sure. I have a question. So these numbers…” Caitlin said, holding up the recipients list of the group text Dex had sent earlier, to show Dex and Chris’s names, followed by three unsaved numbers. “I’m guessing the US one that isn’t Boston is yours, Nursey? And then which way round are Jack and Ransom?”

Nursey finally looked up from his phone to squint at hers. “Yeah, mine’s a Manhattan number. Ransom’s is Boston. Jack’s the international. He didn’t bother getting a second SIM.”

“Bitty’s going to be sad the others met you properly and you’ve got their numbers and everything,” Chris told Caitlin. “He’s been asking to meet you ever since I told him we were together.”

“We met at Winter Screw!”

Nursey laughed. “No, Farms, you don’t get it. Meeting Bitty is like meeting the parents. A casual sort of being in the same place at the same time before you’re officially a couple doesn’t count.”

“It’s not like meeting the parents, don’t be weird,” Chris said, nose scrunching up. “He’s only five months older than me.”

“Maybe we could have lunch with him one day next week,” Caitlin suggested.

“Yeah! I’ll text him now.” Chris clicked into the group chat only to get rid of the notification for the messages, but didn’t read any of them before he switched to a private chat with Bitty.

“What are you looking at?” Dex asked Nursey, while Chris was texting. “It's not symptoms of OCD, is it? You can't beat yourself up for not seeing it.”

“I  _ should  _ have seen it, though! And I feel so bad that I assumed the cleanliness thing was because—” he cut off, eyes flickering between the three of them before he flung his hands up in frustration. “Well, that it was just a Dex thing! Even after that hangover I had.”

“It’s okay,” Dex told him, with a rare softness.

“No, it’s not.”

Chris felt like he was missing something. “I don’t— What—?”

Nursey’s gaze landed on him, then fell down to his phone again. “I was actually looking at this class. The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food. Science credit.”

“Huh,” Chris said. He made a mental note to make sure Bitty knew about the class at some point, but for now he put his phone away again, and kept his attention on Dex, frowning slightly as he tried to gauge his feelings on the subject change. To his surprise, Dex gave an easy smile, and there was a hint of something akin to relief in his eyes.

“Sounds good. You should take it.”

* * *

They ended up on the floor of Nursey and Dex’s room, with a beer each and a pack of mini pretzels. They had silently agreed to provide a distraction, rather than make Dex talk any more, but his head still came to rest on Chris’s shoulder, a sigh of fatigue shaking through his body, as they watched Caitlin and Nursey challenging each other to see who could do the most press-ups.

“If I do any more, I’m not going to be able to play tomorrow,” Nursey finally said, after letting himself collapse onto his stomach. “Fucking hell, C, you’re girlfriend’s a beast.”

“She’s her own person, Nursey,” Chris reminded him, but he smiled proudly at her when she sprung to her feet.

She leaned over for a kiss before settling opposite him and Dex. “How do you feel about the games this weekend?”

“I think they should be fun!” Chris said. He felt Dex shrug against his arm.

“We're going to light it up, right Dex?” Nursey said. It was certainly true that their passes had been connecting smoothly in practice recently. Even Jack had praised them for their improvement.

“We'll see what happens. There's no guarantees of anything in hockey.”

Nursey opened his mouth to respond, but changed his mind without uttering a word. “Do you want to stay here?” he asked Chris instead. “I can bunk with Dex. It might help him get some sleep before the game.” He winked at them and Chris didn’t have to be able to twist far enough to see Dex's face to know that Nursey was receiving a sour glare.

“No, I'd rather sleep in my own bed anyway. Are you coming to mine? Or do you want me to walk you back to your dorm?” Chris asked Caitlin.

“Yours via mine to pick up a couple of things?”

Their goodbyes consisted of more embraces than usual, both Chris and Caitlin wrapping their arms tightly around Dex, and Chris coming back for another after he had hugged Nursey. Caitlin offered Nursey a fist bump.

“I'll see you after the game tomorrow. I think. March is coming too so it might depend what she wants to do.”

Chris hummed thoughtfully. “Is that happening, then?” He knew that Ransom and March had been talking a lot since Epikegster, but he had no idea what was actually going on.

“Apparently so.”

“What's happening?” Nursey asked.

“March and Ransom,” Dex replied. “Why are you such a gossip?”

“I'd ask why you're such an old man, but you knew the answer so you must be a gossip, too.”

“I knew because I  _ pay attention.” _

“Sure.” Nursey dragged the word out sarcastically.

“Guys,” Chris whined.

Both of them looked up at him to say, “Night, C!” He suppressed a sigh, but let Caitlin catch him rolling his eyes as they left the room.

“At least they never bring it onto the ice any more,” he said.

Caitlin linked their arms. “I think they're closer than they let on. That didn’t sound like genuine arguing to me. More like bickering.”

Chris hummed. “Either way it’s better than when they hated each other.” It was strange to think, sometimes, that they had all only known each other a few months, but the distance they had come together, and the affection he now felt for his best friends was tremendous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *desperately tries to push as much of the angst into the beginning of the chapter and fluff out the later bits even though yeah this is an intense chapter sorry y'all*
> 
> but a bit of lighthearted nonsense: whenever Jack doesn't know what to say in any given situation he says the word hockey and hopes for the best.
> 
> Next up: Ransom and Holster are determined to get their goalie a shutout


	15. Shutout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a rough game which leaves him questioning everything from his name to his place on the team, Chris becomes focused on getting a shutout game. Meanwhile, Dex frets about accommodation for sophomore year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A teeensy bit of minor hockey injury in here, as well as some name dysphoria and various conversations about that.

It was nearing the end of the third period. Jack and Wagner had a point apiece, but Clarkson’s number 94 was making a strong play for a hat trick. Chris was, at the moment, stopping him from getting that all important third goal which would bring Clarkson ahead enough to stop Samwell from being able to catch up in the short time left, and he felt cheered on by Caitlin and March sneaking up to the locker room door during the intermission earlier. He just had to ignore the scoreboard.

The puck ricocheted off his stick, and skidded over to Nursey. Chris skid to the other side of his crease, watching as 37 and Nursey scuffled for possession. Dex moved in from behind the goal, but was only free from 94’s marking for a couple of seconds. Chris frowned as he edged across to keep his eye on the puck. There were four of them in such a small area, the puck bouncing between them in a confusing mess. It broke free, a hit from 94’s stick sending it spiraling towards Chris’s crease. Nursey and Dex both moved at the same time he did, the two opposing forwards following in an attempt to make sure it slipped it past them, and then they were colliding. Something solid hit Chris’s back, forcing his back straight, even as his feet tried to move out from under his body. Winded, he gasped, but he squeezed his eyes closed, then tried to push Dex out of the way so that he could find the puck.

“Whistle’s gone, C,” Dex told him. “Come on, they need space to put your goal back.”

Chris looked around. His goal had been pushed a meter off its line. He was still plastered against it, while Dex moved back to give him a bit more space. On the bench, Jack looked frustrated to not be able to talk to them. Shitty was skating over, though.

“Brah, you okay?”

Chris skated forwards, checked his breathing and stretched out a little. He nodded.

“Okay. Less than a minute left, so coach said we’re not going to swap you off if you’re good to play,” he told him, and patted Chris on the shoulder a couple of times before skating off so that they could restart.

* * *

“It’s probably only going to bruise, but you should go to the hospital anyway. They might want to do an X-ray or MRI.”

Chris groaned. Coach Murray had pushed him towards the physician the moment he was off the ice, and he hadn’t been happy to strip for the guy. Now, he was holding his jersey against his chest, shivering slightly, as the coaches discussed whether or not they needed to call an ambulance. The loss stung almost as much as his back, and it was hard to think straight when he was sure that his coaches were waiting until he had been looked at before admonishing him for his poor performance.

“Can Nursey take me?” he was cowardly enough to ask.

Coach Hall glanced over at Coach Murray. “It would work,” he conceded, talking more to his assistant coach than Chris. “I can handle things up here and go down to the hospital later if need be, and you don’t have to worry about getting home late.” He nodded to himself, then turned back to Chris. “Okay, then, Chow. Go and get changed and showered, and see if Nurse will take you to the hospital. Take Duan with you, and get her to keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir!”

* * *

Chris was cleared in minutes, advised to take an ice bath and reassured that none of the bruising went deep enough to be of concern. Then, a cheery nurse handed over the papers for his insurance details, and Chris retreated to an uncomfortable plastic chair to fill them in. He had done no more than read the section header of the first thing he had to fill in, when he froze. It didn't niggle at him like an itch, the way it had before his flight home after break. Nor did it snap like a bottle finally bursting open after being shaken up, the way it had with his mom. It was, instead, a sudden high wave which came with a soft roll but left him stranded in open water, scared of being pulled under.

“C?” Nursey asked, his voice tinged with concern.

Chris looked up. “I can't.”

“Do you need me to spot you?” He reached into his pocket, no doubt to get his credit card and Chris shook his head desperately.

“It's not the insurance. It's— It feels like— It's not my name.” He let out a shaky breath and looked down at the form again.

Nursey frowned, but then realization washed over his face and he smiled softly. “Yeah? What is it, then?”

“I don't— I don't know. I mean— It's Chris. I think. That's fine. That's— I like that. But it's not—” He cut himself off with a shake of the head and tried to push away the acidic taste rising in his mouth.

“Okay,” Lardo said. “Except these are legal papers so how about I fill those in while you decide what you might want to change it to.” She plucked the clipboard from his hand and sat back as if it were that simple.

As Lardo pulled the SMH’s electronic copy of Chris’s medical records on her phone, Nursey flung an arm around his shoulder.

“You know if you like Chris you can change your name to just that. Or to Kristoff or Christian or Christos or... Crisby.” He pulled a face. “But don't go for Christian. You don't have to change it radically, bro. I think a lot of people do just to get away from those associations but you don't have to. And you could always choose a middle name for yourself that you can then go by if you start to feel like that would be better for you. Enough people go by their middle names that it's not weird.  _ Or  _ you could make Crisby your middle name! How about Sidney Crisby Chow?”

Chris frowned at him. “I'm going to go with Christopher.” He wondered if it had been a part of Nursey’s plan to make the choice easy for Chris by babbling and suggesting ridiculous names. “A middle name is a good idea. I don't know where to start with picking one, though.”

“You know what's a great name?”

“Not Crisby.”

_ “Christopher Derek.” _

Chris groaned. “Oh God, no.”

Nursey opened his mouth in mock offence. “What do you mean,  _ ‘oh God, no’ _ ? That would be brilliant!”

“I'm not naming myself after you.”

“I thought we were  _ friends.” _

“Since when have friends had to name themselves after each other?” Chris asked.

“Dude,” Lardo said. “Sign here.” She held out the form, holding her thumb over the space where she had written his name.

When Chris had scribbled some rendition of a signature on the papers, Nursey asked, “What do you think, Lards? What should Chowder’s name be?”

“Larry.”

Chris glowered at her. “I hate you both.”

“Okay, okay, serious answer.” She frowned for a second, thinking about it. “How about Robin?”

“I don’t know, Robin might be a little—”

“Yeah!” Nursey interrupted, sounding much too excited. "For a middle name, definitely."

Chris frowned, suddenly suspicious. “Christopher—  _ No!” _

“Bro, that would have been so funny if you’d been for it, though,” Lardo said.

Chris rolled his eyes without replying, handed the forms to the hospital receptionist, and waited for her to flick through them and confirm everything seemed in order. Five minutes later, they were sliding into Nursey’s car, listing names.

“James.”

“Neil.”

“Carlton.”

“Drake.”

Chris twisted round to look at Lardo questioningly. She shrugged. “Ransom’s not here to suggest it himself.”

“How about Adam?” Nursey proposed.

“Rule: No names of people on the team,” Chris said.

“Who on the team is called Adam?”

Lardo snorted from the backseat.

“What? Nobody’s— Oi! Learn to fucking drive!” Nursey scowled in the direction of a red Prius, which sped past them, horn blaring.

“You probably should have indicated, bro,” Lardo pointed out.

“Nah, he’s just an idiot driver,” Nursey said.

“Okay,” Lardo said skeptically. “Anyway I have a question that you don’t have to answer.” Chris felt her press her foot into the back of his set and took that as an indication that she was talking to him.

“Yeah?” he said.

“You don’t have a middle name at the moment. But, like, not even a Chinese name?”

“Oh. Uh, I do sort of, that my parents gave me but it’s not on my birth certificate or anything? And it means sister so…”

Lardo hummed in response. “You wouldn’t ask your parents for another?”

Chris considered it. “I wouldn’t feel bad about doing that any more. My mom was really cool about it when I talked to her about my name over break. She even told me what boys’ names they’d picked out for me. You know, before I was born. But I’ve never used my Chinese name. I don’t feel like I need another.”

“What names had they picked out?” Nursey asked.

“Oh, uh. Dad wanted Linton and Mom wanted Frank.”

“Chris Frank,” Nursey muttered, at the same time that Lardo said, “Christopher Linton.”

“Maybe not,” Chris said, with a sigh. Neither of them sounded right to him.

“You could combine them,” Nursey said.

“...Fran...ton? Link?” Chris asked.

“Franklin, bro. Christopher Franklin. That sounds hella dope.”

Chris considered it, testing the names out together on his tongue. “Christopher Franklin. I can't decide if it's more explorer or president, but it does sound cool. I'll— I don't have to decide now.”

“Of course not,” Nursey told him. “You should talk to your parents about it.”

They  fell into a thoughtful silence which lasted about five minutes before Lardo piped up, “I thought it was Crosby, not—”

“It is,” Chris reassured her, and he shot a glare in Nursey’s direction, “and he's not even a Pens fan.”

Nursey shook his head. “Oh, come on, C. He must be a Pens fan by now, at least a bit. You can't be captain of a team you're not rooting for.”

“I meant you're not a Pens fan. Why would I name myself for a player on a team I don’t support, and why would you suggest a player on a team you don't support either?”

Nursey shrugged. “Haus or dorm?” was all he asked, instead of a reply.

“Haus,” Lardo told him. “Jack's already got an ice bath ready.”

Chris suppressed a groan. He really hated ice baths.

* * *

To make up for his bath, Bitty had prepared turkey sandwiches for Chris, followed by a Jack-approved Greek yogurt cheesecake. Chris felt guilty even looking at the plates of food. “Thanks, but— I'm sorry, guys. I didn’t play my best today.”

He sank into a chair, wincing as he did.

“Bro, you did great. You weren’t the only player out there today, and sometimes things don't go right for the team, but you did great,” Ransom insisted. He squeezed Chris’s hand, and then leaned back so that Holster could take his empty dessert plate away.

“Yeah!” Holster added in, dumping the plates in the sink and leaving them. “We'll get you a shutout tomorrow.” He sheepishly turned away from the glare Bitty had sent him and turned the faucet on to wash the dishes.

“I let in those goals.”

Ransom shook his head. “He didn’t get the hattie, Chowder! He must have had twenty shots on goal just himself, and that was our fault for letting him get to there, but you only let in two of them. 2-1 is not a bad lose, considering how the game went. And then Holtzy was way unlucky with that offside call in the second, which could have turned things around for us. Seriously. Tomorrow’s your day, bro. I can feel it.”

“I don't know…”Chris said, doubtfully.

“You're okay to play, right?” Bitty checked. Chris nodded. “Then you'll get there, Chowder, honey. You’re only a frog and you earned your place as starting goalie. Now eat up unless you want to waste away instead.”

With a reluctant smile tugging on his lips, Chris finally picked up one of the sandwiches. “Did someone talk to Caitlin?” he asked, horrified with himself for only remembering now. His eyes flicked between Ransom and Dex.

“She knows you're fine,” Dex said. “She said she'd be in her dorm if you wanted to know where she was.”

* * *

Chris took it easy the next day. It was another game day, so he couldn't afford to rest completely, but his ribs hurt enough to force him not to push himself, especially when Lardo confirmed to him that the coaches wanted him on the ice. It was just a bruise so playing couldn’t make it any worse, but he spent the morning lying on his front, disposable ice packs on his back for twenty minutes at a time, and Caitlin lying next to him.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, about half an hour before lunch.

Chris hummed and lifted his head for a kiss. “Okay. It's leaking, I think.”

“I’ll be back in a second,” Caitlin muttered. She took the ice off his back and climbed over him so that she could drop the pack into the bin. Chris grabbed a cloth from the floor to wipe up the damp from his back, then rolled over to watch her. When she came back, she knelt over him, straddling his hips so that she could dip down for another kiss.

“Yeah, let's stay here until the game,” Chris muttered into her lips. Eventually they would go for lunch, and then he would have his pre-game nap at the Haus, but that wasn't on his mind just yet.

* * *

Letting in one goal was more frustrating than the two of the night before. It was a flubbed attempt at a save in the third period and though it made no difference to the end result Chris knew he should have been able to stop it. After the game, he sat, head in hands, pretending not to hear Bitty chastise Ransom and Holster for putting so much pressure on the shutout. Luckily, the attention was drawn towards Nursey the second he came into the locker room, the puck which marked his first NCAA goal in hand. Dex was pulled into a locker room celly with Nursey, shouts of D-man chemistry and beautiful assists filling the room. Chris was able to slip away to the showers while everyone else huddled around his two best friends.

* * *

His back ached even more the next day, and had turned a dark purple, so he took advantage of the rare free Sunday to stay in his dorm room feeling sorry for himself. His phone went off occasionally: Bitty letting him know there was pie at the Haus; Caitlin asking how he was; Dex asking if he wanted to study with him and Nursey; Nursey sending a string of incomprehensible words which implied that studying was the last thing on his mind. Chris replied enough to stop them from worrying, told Caitlin to have a fun day out with the Samwell Deaf Community, mentioned wanting to rest up to the SMH, then rolled onto his side and turned on Netflix.

A knock on the door drew him away from the random movie he had put on, and he closed the window completely instead of pausing it. The fact that he couldn’t think what the movie was about was probably a sign that he should stop watching it. He pulled a hoodie over his bare chest, and stumbled over to open the door. Dex and Nursey stood there, a tupperware box in Dex’s hands.

“We brought pie,” Nursey said.

“I said I was okay,” Chris told them, and they exchanged a look.

“C, you didn’t come back to the Haus last night, and today you’d rather hang out in your room than there, too,” Dex pointed out. There was a softness in his voice which Chris was still unused to hearing, even from this new ‘trying to be open about his feelings’ Dex.

“So? We have a day off. I can’t want a day to sleep?”

“Chowder.”

“I have a bruise across my back from Friday night. It stopped me sleeping properly last night, and I was tired enough already from two hockey games. I’m fine, okay?”

Dex rolled his eyes, and Nursey sighed. “Look, C,” Nursey said. “It’s okay if you’re beating yourself up over not getting a shutout. We think you played well, and don’t need to worry about it, but of course it’s disappointing, especially when this week it feels like it’s all Ransom and Holster talked about. But if that’s what this is about, we’re not going to let you mope alone.”

“Actually, no matter what this is about, you don’t have to do it alone,” Dex added. “At least help us out with this pie for a bit?”

Chris bit down on his lip, wishing that he could say no to them and crawl back into bed, so that he wouldn’t be a burden to them, but at the same time craving their company. “What sort of pie is it?”

Nursey smirked and pushed his way into the room. “Strawberry and rhubarb.”

“Ohh, that’s my favorite!” Chris said, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized what they probably meant. He frowned. “Bitty asked you to do this.”

“Bro, you underestimate us,” Nursey said.

Dex nodded. “He said you’d turned down going to the Haus for pie. I thought, maybe he’s got a lot of work to do, but then you turned down a study session, too. So, I went to buy Bitty some rhubarb, while Nursey distracted Holster from eating the strawberries.”

“So now, here we are,” concluded Nursey with a shrug.

Unexpected tears welled in Chris’s eyes. “You guys,” he said, and he flung his arms around both of them at once. “I’m not crying,” he added after a pause.

“It’s okay, Dex is probably about to, too,” Nursey told him.

There was another pause in which Dex’s one-handed grip on Chris tightened slightly, then let up as he said, “Shut up.” He pulled away, face red. “I have allergies.”

“It’s January,” Nursey pointed out. Dex shrugged and put the pie box down on the desk so that he could make Chris’s bed.

“Maybe I’m allergic to dust. Ever think of that, Nurse?”

“Yeah but are you?”

Dex shrugged and took a look around the room, his eyes a little strained. Nursey let out a sigh, grabbed Chris’s arm and pulled him over to sit down.

“Sit, Poindexter,” he said, leaning over Chris to pat his hand against the duvet.

Uncertainty crept into Dex’s expression and tone, now. “We shouldn’t eat in bed.”

“It’s fine,” Chris assured him.

“Technically, we’re on the bed, not in it.” Nursey said, but Dex ignored him even as he retrieved the pie and settled down next to Chris.

The pie was all gone by the time Chris leaned back against the wall, legs dangling off the end of the bed and holding back a wince as his back adjusted to the pressure. “Thank-you.”

“Any time,” they both promised.

* * *

The next day, he let Dex drag him to the Haus after class, and the conversation about where Jack might sign at the end of the season was a good distraction from his own anxiety over his performance. At least Jack signing seemed inevitable. Chris letting the team down couldn’t spoil Jack’s chances there.

It wasn’t until Tuesday, however, that he really started to feel better. He woke up without any pain for the first time in four days, and felt on top of his game in morning practice. Just as Nursey had predicted, without him putting any pressure on himself, he could perform. Now he just needed to find his zone again and let himself stop thinking about the score during games, just as he used to be able to.

“So do we have to like… sign ourselves up for chores and whoever does the most get that senior’s room?” Nursey was asking when Chris tore his attention away Caitlin at team breakfast.

Ransom pulled his eyes away from March, as well. “Not exactly. It’s not like we make a list of things that need doing and whoever wants our room offers to do them. Dibs payment just sort of… happen. Non-Haus players offer to do things for Haus residents, or Haus residents might ask an underclassman to do something, and saying no… We’re not the  _ lax team.  _ We don’t do punishments for refusing to do something for an upperclassman. But you’re more likely to get dibs the more willing you are to say yes.”

Chris frowned, trying to catch up with the conversation but failing to get a grasp of it. “What are we talking about?”

“Dibs,” was the extent of Holster’s reply.

“For…”

“Who gets Jack and Shitty’s rooms next year,” Dex explained. His mouth twisted as if he were upset by the thought of getting one of the rooms — or perhaps the thought of not getting one? Chris knew which option made more sense, but it was hard to tell. Ransom and Holster started to describe how dibs worked, and the different things each Haus member had done in order to get them. They explained why it had been unprecedented for Bitty to be offered dibs as a freshman without having worked for them, and at that point Chris took the time to look around at the older members of the team. There were seniors there who had never been given dibs, and he knew that they had organized their own off-campus accommodation together, but it wasn’t anywhere near frat row, and he wondered how they felt about it. Most of them weren’t even paying attention to the conversation. A few of the juniors were eyeing Ransom and Holster up, though, looking a little peeved that they were talking about this to the frogs. They, at least, thought that the Haus should sooner go to older students apparently. Chris supposed he should start looking into accommodation for sophomore year soon.

* * *

Nursey kept bringing dibs back up again after that, and though Dex glared at him every time, Chris reckoned he was dwelling on them more than he let on. When Ollie loaded Holster’s kit onto the bus for him at the weekend, Dex stared for a little longer than he should, eyes narrowed. Chris gave his elbow a tug, and they took a loop of the bus, not talking as Dex checked the tires for punctures.

They climbed onto the bus and settled down in their normal seats, Dex pulling out his phone the moment he had pulled his seat belt over his lap. Nursey flashed him a suspicious look.

“Bro, why are you so attached to your phone today? You’re not normally a check it every minute person.”

“I'm just checking my emails, Nursey,” Dex said, and his mouth curled into a smirk before he spat out,  _ “Chill.” _

Nursey rolled his eyes, but didn’t let up his penetrative stare.

Dex sighed. “I applied for another job, okay?”

Chris frowned over the wording. “I didn’t know you'd been applying for any jobs.”

“It's just the one,” Dex said, with a shake of his head. “Working at Stop and Shop.”

“But you said another…” Nursey said, the same confusion in his voice as Chris felt.

Dex stilled, eyes widening for a split second before he closed them and sighed in resignation. “Another in addition to the job I already have working in the Samwell student services center.”

Chris caught Nursey’s eye. Both of them were surprised at the revelation, and they rushed to ask their questions.

“Why didn't you tell us?!”

“Bro, when the fuck do you even have time to do that without me noticing?”

Dex stared at his knees as he replied. “I do it Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Every week. And I didn’t say anything because neither of you have to have a job to feel secure in whatever accommodation you might end up in next year, let alone a  _ second  _ one.”

Chris winced. He had hoped that they wouldn’t end up talking about what the conversation about dibs had reminded them all of.

“I thought you had Physics on a Thursday afternoon,” Nursey said.

Dex frowned. “Uh, no? I have that on Mondays and Fridays.”

“Shit. So, Thursdays when you’re never around, you’re  _ working?” _

“When will you work at Stop and Shop?” Chris asked quickly, because Dex was starting to look annoyed with Nursey.

“The job I applied for is nights during the week.”

Chris balked. “But when will you  _ sleep?” _

“It’s not that late. Murder closes at 11, right? So they need someone to do late evening, then a couple of hours afterwards of sorting things out. I’ll be back at the dorm by half past one, then I’ll get four hours sleep even when we have morning practice the next day.”

Chris didn’t feel like his question of when Dex would sleep had been satisfied, but Dex shook his head and changed the topic. “Bitty said he met Cait.”

* * *

As January drew to a close, the snow fell fast and furious. Classes were cancelled for weather when a blizzard hit Samwell, and Coach Murray was unable to make it in for practice on Monday. By Wednesday, practice had been cancelled too, though Jack still showed up at Chris's dorm with with a supply of protein bars and a reminder to rest up and stay warm. The latter was particularly difficult when the outside temperature was below freezing, and a draft seeped in from around his bedroom window. Caitlin brought her throw blankets round and the two of them make a nest in Chris’s tiny dorm bed which they barely left for three days.

By the time the blizzard had lifted enough for life to resume as normal, the hockey team found themselves working to an intense practice regime, as losing even a couple of practices could affect their chances for the playoffs. They entered a winning streak which drove them to work even harder. An increased talk of the seniors’ last months with the team soured the mood a little, but was motivation enough to put their all into every game. Dex was rarely seen without bags under his eyes as he juggled hockey, classes, two jobs and a challenge he had seemed to have set himself to fix every inch of the Haus before the summer. At the same time, pink hearts appeared in every shop window and Chris was faced with the decision of what to do for Caitlin for Valentine's Day.

“Is it too much to do a fancy meal out? We haven’t done that at all yet and I don't know if Valentine's is the right time to do that because it's more expensive and it'll be more  _ more.  _ So is that too much? But wait, why haven't we done that yet? Maybe we should have! Am I a terrible boyfriend for never taking her out to dinner? All our food dates have been eating takeout in dorm rooms. Except when we've been to the d hall together but that doesn't count as a date, does it? Oh, well we've been to Jerry's for lunch, but nowhere  _ fancy,  _ you know?”

Chris looked desperately to Nursey, who was sat on the floor of Chris’s room, staring at him over the top of a book with one raised eyebrow.

“C, you're asking the worst person this. I'm probably the only person on the team who's never been on a Valentine's date. Or, you know, a proper date at all.”

Chris frowned. “Not even with your… guy. That you're sort of with.”

“There was a sort of wandering round Boston date but with him not being out all we can really do in public is hang out like friends.”

“But do you have Valentine's plans for him?”

Nursey let out a long sigh. “Valentine's is really not my thing. I don't know, C. Why don't you just ask Farmer what she wants to do.”

“Nursey! I can't do that!”

His response elicited a look of confusion from Nursey, so Chris shook his head and let it drop.

“Anyway, talking of… nothing related,” Nursey said. “Let's go visit Dex at work.”

“What?”

“Come on, it’s a Tuesday afternoon, so he’s working. He kept this secret because he knew we’d go and distract him, so  _ obviously  _ we have to go and annoy him as punishment.”

“I don’t think that—” Chris started, but Nursey was already wrapping his hand around Chris’s wrist and dragging him out the dorm. Chris fought a smile. He might not really want to bother Dex when he was working, but it was good to see Nursey so keen to spend extra time with him. Their banter was definitely more chirpy now than argumentative, and Chris felt certain that a part of Nursey was actually missing Dex even after just a few hours apart from him.

“Anyway, we have a reason for going,” Nursey told him, when they reached the road.

Chris tried to think of anything they might have to see Dex about so desperately. “We do?”

“Bro, we promised you we’d figure out the process for changing your name. Lardo’s been looking into the social security stuff, but she said that part of it is going to be changing your name on all your documents and things. That includes what name Samwell have in their records for you. Who better to ask about it than our best friend who works in student services?”

Chris stopped walking immediately. Dex didn’t know that he was trans, and the last way that Chris wanted him to find out was by him walking in asking how to change his name so that Samwell’s records wouldn’t have him listed under a female name any more. A big reason why Chris hadn’t told Dex at all at this point was because he figured that timing was going to be key. He was uncertain how Dex would react, but at least Chris felt pretty confident that he wasn’t the sort to be offended by not finding out earlier. So, he was taking his time to build up the courage to broach the subject at a time which made sense and didn’t end up putting too much pressure on either of them. He had yet to work out when that might be.

“We can’t tell him  _ now,”  _ Chris said, and he was unable to keep the panic out of his voice.

Nursey’s face dropped. “No! C, no, I didn’t mean— Shit. I’m not trying to get you to out yourself to him. He doesn’t have to know they’re for you. I was going to say that it was for someone in our Ethics class. It’s not exactly a lie.”

Chris chewed on his lips, but Nursey had a point, and was clearly determined to see this through. For Chris’s part, he was curious enough to want those forms. Maybe he was unlikely to get any of this set in motion before the summer, but there was no harm in working out what he needed to do in advance.

The reception desk in the student support office was empty, but there was a bell to ring to get the attention of whoever was supposed to be manning it.

“I'll be with you in a minute!” Dex’s voice called from a back room. Nursey snickered and Chris hit him in the stomach to make him shut up. He only laughed louder, causing Dex to poke his head through in curiosity.

“Are you messing with— What the fuck are you two doing here?”

“Dex!” Nursey exclaimed, as if they had neither planned nor expected to see him. “Fancy you being here."

Dex rolled his eyes. "I'm a bit busy right now for this. You found where I work. Now scoot."

"That's not very helpful and welcoming. Who do I talk to about poor customer service?"

Dex scowled at Nursey. Chris jumped to intervene. "We actually were wondering about something. Not just here to get in your way at work."

Nursey flashed him a surprised look, but by the time he turned back to Dex his face betrayed nothing. "Ch'yeah. Someone in our Ethics class is thinking of changing his name. It's because he's trans, so he's a little nervous about asking what the process is himself with registering a name change with the school."

"Oh. Cool. It's really easy. There's just one form and you only have to put in student number, email and Samwell address for them to confirm who you are on the original application  so he won't have to deadname himself to fill in the form. I can print that off for you to give to him or he can find it on the intranet. Which do you think?"

Chris stared at Dex. He couldn't believe how calm he was being about it; so coolly unconcerned by their request and even using the right terminology without a bat of an eye. It was strange to think that only a few months before Dex’s knowledge of trans issues had been non-existent. The long silence drew his attention to the fact that Nursey had shrugged and looked to Chris for an answer.

"Oh! Uh. Now would be good? The intranet has shit navigation."

Dex started tapping on the computer as he explained. "So you can just tell your friend to fill this in and send it off. A date will be set for when he can come in with identification proving the change in name and they'll do him a new student ID card then. They can change the graduation certificate name and student card without the official change but he'll have to go through the process again when it's changed on social security, so he should bear that in mind if he's yet to change it legally. Any other questions?"

The sound of a printer under the desk was heard as Chris and Nursey glanced at each other and shook their heads. Dex put the form in a plastic wallet and handed it over to Chris. "I think I trust you more than Nursey to carry it without needing to come back for another," he explained with a grin.

"Rude," Nursey grumbled.

"Thanks, Dex," Chris said, softly. He knew that this wasn't coming out to Dex, but he couldn't be more grateful over Dex's response. It gave him hope about when he did eventually come out, that Dex would be supportive, but also it was reassuring to know that their friendship wouldn’t be the reason behind that welcome. Dex could hear about a potential stranger being trans and accept it without even flinching and that meant more to Chris than a certainty that Dex would still be his best friend after coming out to him. A part of him wanted to say something; to be open and honest about who the forms in his hand were really for; but they both deserved better than to have this conversation while Dex was supposed to be working. “We’ll see you at dinner?” he said instead, and Dex nodded as Chris pulled Nursey towards the exit.

* * *

Chris didn’t have time to think about talking to Dex again, with only a few days left to plan Valentine’s Day. It fell on a Saturday this year, and Chris was limited by the game he would be playing late afternoon, so he ended up settling for the only decent restaurant nearby and in his budget which wasn’t fully booked by Thurday evening. On Friday night he put Valentine’s out of his mind, told Caitlin to have a good Galentine’s outing to Boston with the volleyball team and held her good luck kiss to his lips the whole walk to the Haus for his pre-game nap. That luck clung to him throughout the evening. Their defense were on fire, and Chris felt a thrill through his body every shot he slammed down the ice towards his teammates. With ten seconds left on the clock and Wicky chasing the puck over the far blue line, he risked a glance up at the scoreboard. He didn’t remember letting a goal in, and the LED numbers suggested that he hadn’t, but Chris wasn’t sure how to believe that. Still, it was the only explanation for why with three seconds still on the clock Nursey fell out of position, deciding that the forwards didn’t need him any more. He sped instead towards Chris, Dex on his heels, and they pulled him into a celly breaths before the game was officially over.

“You fucking did it,” Nursey told him, and finally Chris let it sink in.

“I did. Oh my God.”

The rest of the team joined them in the goal crease, breaking up the conversation, but it was just the three of them again by the time the commemorative puck came up.

“Are you going to take it?” Dex asked.

Chris thought about it for a second. “Can one of you take it and wrap it up so I don’t have to touch it, and then I’ll give it to Cait.”

“Bro,” Nursey said.

“You’re such a sap,” Dex added, but there was a smile on his face and he was already pushing off to talk to Lardo about getting it.

Nursey watched him go, then turned a grin on Chris. “Great game, there, Christopher.”

Chris wondered what he had done to deserve such wonderful friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, Chris finds out who Nursey's dating???


	16. Year of the Goat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between Valentine's day, Chinese New Year, and the end of hockey's main season, there's a lot to celebrate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major warnings for depression, and for a panic attack, which is related to coming out.

> __ Chris  
>  Happy Valentine’s Day!! ❤❤❤  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Caitlin  
>  _ Aww thank-you!!!  
>  You too!!! ❤❤❤

 

Chris took a break from tradition in the morning, getting coffee with Caitlin at Annie’s instead of hanging out with the team, then when he really couldn’t avoid his pre-game nap any longer he dithered over whether or not to just have it in his dorm.

“It’s fine, Chris,” Caitlin told him. “Go to the Haus. I’ll see you after the game.”

“Okay. I might have to do team stuff for a bit, but I’ll text you when I’m on my way to pick you up.”

She pulled him in for another kiss before they parted.

* * *

Everyone else had left by the time Chris finished showering after the game. It wasn’t the first time it had happened — he washed so much later than everyone else that sometimes it didn’t occur to them that there was still someone to wait for — but it had been a while since Nursey had completely abandoned him. He frowned. They had all been a little distracted by the high of the win, and the excited chatter which surrounded Shitty’s hunt for some poster that someone in the crowd had brought. Nursey had probably got caught up in that.

He made his way to the Haus alone, and walked in to find Dex and Nursey sat at the kitchen table, and Bitty on the counter thumbing through his phone.

“Of  _ course,”  _ Dex said, shaking his head. Chris glanced around the room, trying to figure out what conversation he had walked in on.

“Why is Dex of course-ing?”

Nursey pulled a face. “Because today,” he said, and let out a long sigh, “is my birthday.”

“Of course,” Dex repeated.

Chris blinked. “Oh. Uh, did you want to— I mean. I feel so bad. I’m going out! I don’t have to. Cait will understand if—”

“C, chill, I don’t want to celebrate it.”

“I should have seen this coming,” Dex said, now muttering to himself more than addressing the room as a whole. “It couldn’t have been any other day.”

“We should do something,” Chris said.

Nursey pulled his car keys out of his pocket and threw them at Chris, who caught them on reflex. “Bro, please, go on your date. Poindexter and I are just going to go back to our dorm and sleep. My birthday is not that important to me. It’s chill.”

“But—”

“Christopher Franklin Chow, go on your fucking date.”

“Where the fuck did Franklin come from? I thought his name was just—  _ ouch!”  _ Dex flinched in such a way that Nursey must have kicked him under the table. “What the fuck?”

“Please, C, go.”

Chris looked between them for a moment. He wasn’t really sure about leaving the two of them alone on Nursey’s birthday, especially if they weren’t planning on staying at the Haus much longer, but he didn’t know how to say no to Nursey’s request. He turned the car keys over in his hands and nodded.

* * *

The restaurant Chris had booked had the air of a typical student dive, except that it was hidden on a side road halfway between Samwell and Boston. Despite being in such a strange place, it was busy inside, but the waitress led the two of them to a free table at the edge of the room, and took their orders for soda straight away.

“It’s looking good for playoffs,” Caitlin said, after their conversation about what they wanted to order had flowed seamlessly into a recap of the evening’s game.

“Don’t say that!” Chris felt a blush spreading across his cheeks.

“I’m just saying! This time next week—”

“Cait!”

“Okay! I won’t jinx it. I’m  _ so  _ proud of you, though.”

Chris smiled into his Sprite. Even if he did feel embarrassed by the praise, and nervous about whether acknowledging how close they were to the playoffs might make them fall at the final hurdle, it was pretty incredible that they were only two week away from the end of the regular season and yet none of them were treating it as if they were nearing their final game. They would have to be very unlucky not to make the selection for playoffs at this point.

“We can talk about something else, though. We should figure out when we’re both free during the week to hang out.”

Chris nodded. Coordinating diaries was a part of dating he had never considered before, but with both of them being student athletes, even out of volleyball season, it had become necessary for them. “Well Thursday is when New Year starts. Chinese New Year, that is. But I don’t know what I’m doing for that. I think the Boston parade is at the beginning of March.”

“I have this essay due Wednesday lunchtime, so the beginning of the week I’ll be doing that. What do you usually do for Chinese New Year?”

Chris shrugged. “Just… food, I guess? Seeing people. _So_ many people, but that’s obviously a bit different with me at Samwell.”

“Well… Let me know what you decide, and if I’m invited to any of it.”

“Of course you’re invited,” Chris told her. He smiled at the blush his words caused. “Anyway, what’s your essay?”

* * *

When Wednesday rolled around, there were red posters, with immaculate Vietnamese calligraphy painted onto them, laid out to dry across the green couch. Lardo had decided that flowers were too expensive to buy, so instead she had two rolls of red and yellow tissue paper. The moment Chris sat down, he was handed the yellow roll and told to start making flowers. He watched the YouTube tutorial through once, and when she clicked replay, he started folding.

“I’m cooking tonight,” she told him. “I brought my rice cooker over and everything. You want to help?”

Chris shrugged. “I don’t really cook? I don’t think I could help, much. Bitty doesn’t think I’m very helpful, I don’t think.”

It made him feel a little useless. His flowers were all turning out wonky even though the video claimed to be an 'easy' method, and Lardo was now doing her own thing, creating complicated origami masterpieces. His culinary expertise was non-existent and he hadn't even much experience in Lunar New Year customs. His parents had always given he and his sister red envelopes of money, which he expected through the post in the next few days, and they somehow had dinner with every Chinese family in a mile radius in the first two weeks of the year. They had been to the festival and parade in San Francisco a few times in the past, too, but watching Lardo combine culture, artistic skills and even a hidden knowledge of traditional cooking was a little overwhelming.

"Are you doing anything else?" he asked.

She paused to cut off some of his yellow tissue for her flower. "The fireworks at Lake Quad are when we’ve got the roadie, so Shitty said he’d get some for us to set off tonight. If I didn't have an art show in a week that I should probably be doing things for, I'd say we should make a dragon. As it is, I need all the scrap fabric I've got."

"Fireworks sound good."

"You're totally in charge of the sparklers, bro, no debate."

A smile spread across his face. 'Thanks, Lardo."

* * *

In addition to Chris and Lardo, the whole Haus came together for dinner, as well as Nursey, Dex and Caitlin. Chris tried to show Dex and Caitlin how to use chopsticks, while Nursey ignored his completely and immediately started eating with his hands.

“How are you supposed to hold the rice, though?” Dex asked, frowning in concentration. “I don’t want to eat it one grain at a time.”

“Bro, you are so bad at this,” Lardo told him. When she leaned forwards to correct his grip, Chris noticed Bitty slip into the kitchen, presumably to get a fork.

“I thought you were supposed to be good with your hands, Poindexter. All that mechanical expertise,” Nursey said with a sly grin.

“I don’t think you can talk when you’re covered in your food, Nurse,” Dex retorted, but his face reddened.

“You don’t need cutlery for rice.”

“Maybe not, but  _ you  _ definitely do.”

Nursey pretended to flick a bit of rice at Dex, who flinched.

"Guys, stop it," Chris whined.

“This is really good, Lardo,” Caitlin said, as Dex and Nursey finally settled down.

“Thanks. I got the packet sauce super cheap at Stop and Shop between reduction for nearly being out of date and Poindexter's staff discount.”

Chris paused, a piece of pork an inch from his mouth. “What? I thought you were cooking!”

“I did cook, idiot. This counts.”

“Yeah, she went out and bought everything herself, brah,” Shitty said, pointing a chopstick at Chris.

“Except for what she got me to buy, you mean?” Dex asked. 

“This is the sort of cooking I could have done, though,” Chris said, staring down into his bowl.

“Good for you, brah. Now, eat up, I want to do these fireworks before the lax bros decide it’s late enough to call campus police on us.”

* * *

Later, armed with Bitty’s thermos flask of hot cocoa, and Jack standing on guard with the fire extinguisher just in case, Shitty set off the fireworks outside the Haus.

“Seems kind of dangerous to be doing that half-naked,” Nursey commented, but he sat back with a handful of popcorn to watch. Dex moved a bucket of water closer to Lardo who was waving her sparkler around to make patterns in the sky while Bitty tried to capture them on camera for Instagram.

“Year of the sheep, right?” Nursey said, leaning back on his elbows. “You ever looked after sheep, Poindexter?”

“I don't live on a farm.” Dex replied dryly.

“We always said it was a goat,” Chris said. He was feeling tired now, the combination of cold evening and warm coats and cocoa lulling him into relaxation. Caitlin leaned against him, suppressing a yawn, and Chris pulled her closer as the last of Shitty’s fireworks fizzled out into nothing.

“Whatever it is, you think it's our year?” Nursey asked.

Chris smiled back. “Yeah, I think it could be.”

* * *

It certainly felt like their year that weekend when they stormed through their match against Princeton, and slaughtered Quinnipiac to secure their place in the NCAA playoffs. Their games the week after were more courtesy games than anything, and to make sure that they had played the every other team the right number of times. Between their hockey success, the continuation of Chinese New Year celebrations, Ollie’s twentieth birthday and then Jell-O’s twenty-first, the SMH seemed to spend ten days partying.

There were a couple of weeks before the start of playoffs, all the seniors had a mountain of work to get through, and Wagner’s knee had been strapped up again, so the coaches decided that the team could have a few days off from practice. To wake up, Caitlin in Chris’s bed and neither of them having anywhere they needed to be other than class, was bliss.

When Caitlin left Chris's room, a little flushed, for her first class on Friday; a day they both had late starts; Chris tapped at his phone absent-mindedly. The group chat had been quieter than usual the past couple of days. There was a little chirping between Ransom and Holster, and the usual conversation between those who had a class together, but otherwise nothing. Chris frowned when a new message came through. It was five minutes into that food class that Bitty and half the rest of the team were taking, so it was not much of a surprise that a new conversation was starting up, but he was surprised by the message.

> **SMH Group Chat  
> ** _ Holster  
>  _ Yo, Nursey, bro you bailing on us?  
>  Where are you?

 

When there was no reply, the group descended into their usual chatter about the class and those around them, and didn’t mention Nursey again, but Chris felt bad. He hadn’t heard from either of his best friends in two days and he hadn’t thought anything of it until now. He glanced at his watch. There was no harm in going to theirs for an hour before he and Dex had to leave for their respective classes in adjacent buildings. In haste, he gathered everything he would need for class and headed over. A track runner leaving the building let Chris in, and he was glad to find the door to Nursey and Dex’s suite unlocked. Nobody was in the den, so Chris crossed immediately to the bedroom. He paused at the sight which greeted him.

Dex sat sideways across Nursey’s bed, his legs dangling off the edge and his laptop on a tray on his lap. He had headphones in and was frowning at the screen, one hand on the keyboard and the other resting on the lump of sheets next to him, which Chris finally figured out was Nursey, visible only where his hair stuck out from under a blanket. Chris knocked on the open door and Dex twisted sideways to look at him.

“Hi, Chowder.” He pulled one of the headphones out. “Is it that time already?”

“Uh, no, we’ve got an hour. I just— The guys were saying in the group chat that Nursey wasn’t at class, so I thought— Well I didn’t have class and I was worried so I came round early.”

“Oh. Uh, yeah, Nursey’s not feeling too good.”

Chris frowned as he came further into the room. The remnants of a blanket fort were strewn between Nursey’s bed and his desk chair, though a couple of walls had been removed. As Dex’s bed was still bare, they must have used both their sheets and throws to make it. “He’s sick?” he asked.

“Yeah. Not like— It’s not contagious or anything. It’s mental health stuff.” Dex looked over at Nursey’s curls.

“Oh! Uh, because of his bipolar?” Chris asked. He chewed on his lips, hoping that Dex even knew about that. Nursey had said that it was something he couldn’t talk to Dex about, but that had been three months before, and since then Dex had indicated that he knew about Nursey’s medication, and so many other things had evolved between the two of them.

“Yeah,” Dex breathed. “He’s depressed. I don’t even— I mean, he keeps saying that it’s not because of anything in particular, it’s just what happens, but I don’t know. He’s just been getting more and more that he wants to sleep all the time and then today he didn’t want to get up. He didn’t want to do anything, and I—”

Dex broke off with a hiccup, and Chris was surprised to see the moisture in his eyes. Seconds later, he was crying without any reticence and Chris rushed to join him on the bed to offer his comfort.

“It’s going to be okay, Dex,” Chris told him, but there was uncertainty in his voice. He was struck with how difficult it was to find the balance between not staring at the unexpected tears, and being appropriately comforting. “He’ll be okay.”

“I know he will, it’s just hard to watch. I— I— I’m so in love with him, C.”

“What?”

Dex sobbed again, and buried his face in Chris’s shoulder before he repeated himself. “I love him. I hate to see him like this, and I know I can’t fix it, but I wish I could. It’s worse knowing I can’t fix—”

“You… love Nursey?” Chris was so shocked that it took a moment to register that Dex wasn’t replying to him. It took too long for him to see that the way Dex’s body shook had nothing to do with his crying any more; that his breathing had become shallow and some of the color had drained from his face, though his cheeks were still red with emotion. “Dex?”

There was movement under his thighs, and Nursey’s voice joined his. “Will, breathe. Hey. I’m here.” Nursey’s eyes were unfocused from too much sleep and he sat up slower than Chris would have expected, but he didn’t seem surprised that Dex was sat over his thighs, or that Chris was now there. He pressed his hand into Dex’s and rested his forehead against Dex’s cheek. “Breathe for me.”

Dex’s knuckles were white as he gripped onto Nursey’s hand. Chris automatically matched his breathes to Nursey’s, exaggerated and deep. When Dex was closer to normal breathing, Nursey spoke to Chris, without taking his eyes off Dex. “His pills’re on his desk. Get water and food, too.”

As Chris pushed himself off the bed, he could hear Nursey muttering comforts into Dex’s ear. “It’s just Chowder,” was said at least three times. It was enough to make Chris feel nervous as he checked the bottles on Dex’s desk to figure out which pills were the right ones, finally leaving the _ ‘Take Once Daily.’  _ ones behind with the allergy relief eye drops, and holding onto the  _ ‘Take As Needed. Do Not Exceed Recommended Dose.’ _ bottle. He handed it to Nursey and then turned towards the bottle of water and tub of trail mix on Nursey’s desk.

“Wait,” Nursey said. “Dex, what do you need?”

Dex shook his head into Nursey’s neck.

“Do you want food? Water?”

There was a pause before Dex nodded.

“The ones you put here?”

He glanced over at them with bleary eyes, then shook his head.

“Fresh ones?”

Another nod.

Nursey carried on talking to Dex as Chris left the room to see what food they had in their communal area. He took a moment, in the hallway, to let out a shaky breath. _ “What the fuck?”  _ he asked himself. Something in his brain might have been about to short-circuit, so he pushed away the abrupt revelation, and concentrated on rummaging through their food cupboards, where he found a pack of fresh water bottles and some plain Pringles which he took back to the bedroom. Dex had already taken his pill dry by the time he got back, but he sucked up half a bottle of water in one, long sip. It was Nursey who opened the chips and helped himself to a few before feeding a couple to Dex.

“You should walk around a bit,” Nursey said when the two of them had eaten their way through a third of the tube each.

“You too,” Dex croaked.

Nursey lay back down, curled around the Pringles tube. “Eh, but not right now. It’s comfy.”

Dex’s face cycled through a plethora of emotions, and his breath hitched. Chris moved in hastily, holding a hand out to him. “Come on, let’s walk around. It’ll be okay,” he muttered. Dex leaned on him heavily as they did circuits of the room, stepping around the dismantled blanket fort, and Chris focused on breathing the same way Nursey had earlier, encouraging Dex to copy. Finally, Dex pulled away.

“I need to—”

His eyes flickered around for a moment, and then he stooped to retrieve his laptop. Chris watched as he saved his work in three different places, double-checked it had saved properly in the main file, and then shut everything down. He put the laptop away in its case, and tucked it into one of the drawers of his desk. Then, he picked up his sheets and pillows from the floor and started to make his bed. Nursey let out a sigh from his bed.

“He’s ritualizing,” he explained. “Dex, bro, it doesn’t change anything, remember?”

Dex froze, with what looked like a homemade book in his hands. He whispered under his breath, and it sounded like he was counting. When he reached ten, he turned around. “I came out to Chowder.”

Chris felt like he should say something, but he wasn’t sure what. Nursey, at least, seemed to understand. “That’s great, Will. I’m proud of you. C’s chill with it, you know?”

Chris blinked. “Yeah, of course I am! Why wouldn’t I be? Thanks for telling me.”

“I’m gay,” Dex said. He looked at Chris as if maybe they weren’t understanding each other.

“Okay.”

“I—  _ Fuck _ .”

“Woah,” Nursey said, reaching out for Dex, though he still didn’t get out of bed.. “It’s okay. He says he’s okay with it. This is Chowder. You can trust him.”

“Trust me?” Chris repeated. Even he wasn’t sure if it was a plea for clarification, or a request. He cautiously wrapped a hand around Dex’s wrist and led him back to his bed. The three of rearranged themselves so that Dex was in the middle. He looked down at his lap and Chris took the time to examine the front of the sellotape-bound book he was still clutching.  _ The Alphabet Soup Dictionary, by Derek M. Nurse. Foreword—  _ was written across it in pink felt-tip pen. A bright orange post-it note, stuck to the cover over the name of who had written the foreward, read:  _ ‘k, so technically jack has no idea I stole a quote from one of his hist essays for this foreword but one day this book’s gonna be worth $$$$ because of it so I didn’t want to put that in ink. this has all you need to know about being a chill lgbtqiap+ person, dexy, happy learning’ _

Dex still wasn’t speaking, and Chris, still staring at the book; at how the corners of the paper were curled with frequent thumbing; had a stroke of inspiration for how to clear the air. “How about I go first?” he suggested.

“C,” Nursey said with a frown. “You don't have to.”

“Yeah, I think I do.” He took a deep breath and waited for Dex to lift his gaze. “I'm trans. Those name change forms were for me. I'm sorry I didn’t— I was always  _ that kid _ back home. Everyone knew my background. So at Samwell, where I could just be Chowder or Chris or even  _ Christopher _ and for the first time nobody— Well. Most people weren’t misgendering me. It didn't seem important to tell people if they assumed I was male anyway, so I didn't. But that's why…” he bit on his lips as he tried to find the words, but it was Dex who filled in for him, his expression that of when he had just figured out a possible solution for a particularly difficult equation.

“In the locker room. I've never known someone be able to get changed without anyone seeing them like you can. The shower thing isn’t just a weird goalie thing, is it?”

Chris nodded. “When I was thirteen— Puberty, you know? I had my first period and my first bra and— I won't tell you all the gory details, but it was bad enough that my parents took me to the doctor’s. He explained gender dysphoria to me and it resonated. I saw a therapist, and went on hormone therapy when I was fifteen. I had surgery over Thanksgiving break after my eighteenth birthday, but it’s still been hard to get over being self-conscious about stripping in front of people.” When he looked at Dex, and tried to decide what to say next, all words died in his throat. His friend looked a lot calmer than before, and he sent Chris a look, silently asking permission to turn the focus around. Chris nodded.

“When I got to that age that all my friends had started talking about girls, I didn’t want to. Barely months before we’d all still been talking about how gross they are so it was weird for me, and then a couple of years later I got my first real crush on a guy. I was already a loner foster kid. I couldn't be the only gay boy in town too. Or the only out one or whatever.” Dex frowned and shifted about to straighten up the sheets underneath him before he carried on. “The kids in the foster homes were quick to remind me that I already had to clean up my act if I wanted to get adopted, and when my brother started to notice where my attention was, he told me I shouldn’t look at other boys because it would ruin our chances. I couldn't go as far as getting a girlfriend, but all the moving about excused that. I started offering to help out at every potential foster parents’ workplace. By the time I came here, we'd been at the same place for ten months which honestly is a massive record, and on top of that it was people we'd known for years, and they’d also fostered a couple of girls we already knew from the system.

“So they fostered us too and we were there pretty much our whole senior year of high school, even though Dan aged out at the beginning of the year. I had been on the same hockey team for that whole season and could apply here, and then I aged out, too, over the summer, but they did what I never dreamed they would and offered us a place to stay as if we were family. We’d have somewhere to call home, and their other foster kids, I already considered my younger siblings, so I’d get to see them. In return, I'm an on-hand babysitter in the holidays when they need me and I'll work on the lobster boat over summer. But they were careful to make it clear that they didn't approve of Samwell, and that if I don't toe the line, I’m out.”

“Out?” Chris repeated.

“Like, I won’t have anywhere to go in the summer. Or I will, because the state will still have to place me somewhere for the summer, but they’ll tell them they can’t handle me any more and God knows where I’d end up instead. Dan moved out but I still feel like I have family there and it’s not— It’s not like I have any right to a couple of girls I only know from us being in the same foster care system, however much I think of them as my siblings. So if I want to see Meg and Chloe, my only option is to stay in their foster parents’ pockets. That means staying in the closet. And them thinking I'm close-minded and Republican just like them helps.”

Chris started. “Shit. I'm sorry. I actually thought you were—”

Dex winced. “I was— I was an ass about it. I let all of you think I wouldn't be okay with it if you came out. You two, Bitty, Lardo, those other people Holster mentioned who I still don't even know who they are… But, you know, I lived in the sort of communities where people not being straight was the sort of thing that only happened on TV, not in real life, so most of those questions about it at the beginning of the year were me trying to figure it out for myself. How to handle it not being something to be ashamed with, and… adjusting. That doesn't mean I did it in the most sensitive way, but— anyway, it's all in the past now. I just hope everyone thinks I'm less of an ass about it now.” He leaned back and let his head fall to rest on Nursey’s shoulder.

“You’re still an ass,” Nursey told him. Dex elbowed him in the stomach, but it was light enough that Nursey didn’t even flinch.

“And you—” Chris stopped himself before he could ask about the Nursey thing. Dex probably didn’t want Nursey to know about that.

He was surprised, then, when Dex sat up again, and glanced at Nursey, before asking, “About us two?”

“Uh,” Chris grunted uncertainly.

“It’s okay. He knows.”

Nursey shifted. “I was also totally awake for your whole conversation earlier, so if I didn’t before I would now.”

Dex frowned at him, but didn’t say anything.

“Isn’t that, uh,” Chris bit his lip. “I mean, you’re sort of seeing that other guy, and you two live together and play together, and—”

“C, bro, it’s Dex.”

Chris frowned. “Yes?”

“Dex is the guy I’ve been sort of seeing.”

It took Chris a moment to register what Nursey was saying. He felt Dex bristle next to him, and Nursey’s hand brushed Chris’s elbow as he shifted to offer his comfort. It made no sense. “What— I— What? Since when?” Chris looked between them as they shared a long look.

“After that talk about one in four,” Nursey replied, at the same time as Dex said, “your birthday.”

They looked at each other. “I mean, technically it was Winter Screw,” said Dex.

“We had sex the first time the morning after that first kegster.”

“And then haven’t had it since? You’re  _ asexual _ , stop trying to judge our relationship timeline by when we had sex? Our first date was after we dropped you off at the airport before winter break.”

Chris spluttered. “But— But you two  _ hated  _ each other. For  _ months!”  _

“Yeah, it started off to try and relieve the tension,” Nursey shrugged like it was no big deal. “Except maybe all along that was us kidding ourselves, especially after I accidentally made cuddling a pre-game ritual. Then Winter Screw happened and we had the talk about how neither had wanted to be with anyone else. At all; in all our time at Samwell.”

“I never hated you,” Dex said quietly. 

Nursey’s eyes went soft. “We didn't get on, Will, we can't deny that even if we didn't really hate each other as much as we made out. We figured it out and that's the important thing. Besides,” his mouth twitched slyly, “there's a fine line between love and hate.”

Chris expected a sharp return, but Dex just rolled his eyes and then twisted his head to press a kiss to Nursey’s jaw. Nursey kissed back, first Dex’s cheek, then his temple and finally his lips for long enough that Chris stood up. They broke apart to look up at him. He just smiled. “I'm glad you two are happy. You're my best friends. You two being together is just— wow. It's ‘swawesome. Seriously.  I'm going to head off. Let you two… Well. Anyway. I won't tell anyone, I— Oh!” He clapped a hand over his mouth. How could he keep this from Caitlin? “Cait. Oh. No, but— Really, I promise I won't say but oh God she would love to do double dates with you, I know it. We've got nobody to do double dates with and— Shit, I'm sorry! Forget I said anything.”

“Chowder.  _ Chill.” _

To his surprise, Dex didn’t react to Nursey’s choice of word. He just smiled. “Yeah, C, it's okay. She's family. The good sort. You can tell her. Or… maybe I should. But I will. So you don't have to keep it secret from her for me. And double dates would be… We’d have to pretend it was just us two crashing your dates, but it would be really nice to actually finally get a date that wasn’t Netflix and pizza.”

“Netflix and chill,” Nursey amended.

“ _ No.  _ God. You’re insufferable.” Dex sighed, and turned away from where Nursey was giggling, back to Chris. “Just… nobody else, please? Even Bitty. I know we can trust him but I still wouldn't put it past him to vague tweet about it. The more people in on it, the harder it is to keep quiet.”

“Dex. I'm not going to out you to  _ anyone  _ without your permission.” Chris gave him the most serious look he could, pulled both of them into a close hug, and then turned to leave.

“Don’t— You don’t have to go.”

Chris glanced at his watch. “Actually I really do.”

Nursey blinked around the room, as if he was expecting a clock to appear. “Well then Dex has to, too.”

“I can stay here if you want me to.”

“I’m fine, Will. Someone’s got to make notes in Spanish for me later.”

“Will you at least try to come?”

Nursey leveled a look at Dex, who sighed and relented.

Chris and Dex passed the first part of their walk soundlessly. Chris suspected that Dex needed a moment to recompose, so he let him be. He was surprised, though, when Dex broke the silence with an, “I’m sorry.”

There was nothing on Dex’s face to clue Chris into why he was apologizing. “What for?”

“For keeping it from you. For asking you to keep it from everyone else. For being a dick. For springing it on you the way I did. Take your pick.”

“I didn’t tell you either. And— And I  _ was  _ telling people. Nursey’s known since October.”

“Yeah, well, he’s known about me since August.”

Chris choked on a laugh. “I guess he has. Shit. That’s so— You two. I couldn’t even— I’d never have bet on that happening in a million years.”

“We’re  _ so  _ different,” Dex agreed, with a small smile. “Maybe that’s why it works, though. I couldn’t deal with someone like me for too long, but I needed someone like him to make me try this at all.”

A grin cracked across Chris’s face. “Who are you and what have you done with William Poindexter?” he asked.

Dex shoved at him lightly. “Shut up.”

“You’re so besotted, oh my god. Ransom and Holster would fine the fuck out of you.”

“Please don’t.”

Chris glanced at him. “If you don’t fine me and Cait any more.”

“That’s playing dirty, Chow.”

Chris grinned, but the smile faltered as he thought again about how long he had kept his being trans from Dex. The fact that he had been fully accepting made Chris feel even more guilty over his silence. “I’m sorry, too.”

“You didn’t—”

“I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have insisted that you were my best friend at the same time as not trusting you enough to tell you something so big about myself. That wasn’t fair on you. It’s not how a good friend should act.”

Dex grabbed onto Chris’s elbow and pulled them both to a stop. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me when you weren’t sure. I want to think I would have been okay with it, but fuck, Chowder, I don’t know if I would? I came here with such stupid ideas and I didn’t understand. And that’s on me and I would have deserved it, and worse, if I lost you as a friend because of it, but you didn’t—  _ I didn’t tell you either _ . You’re still my best friend.”

Water welled in Dex’s eyes and Chris felt a lump form in his own throat in response. He wrapped his arms around him, and held on tightly.

“I’m sorry for pushing you back in the closet,” Dex muttered into his shoulder. “It really fucking sucks.”

“Yeah,” Chris breathed. “You know, they’d—”

“Don’t.”

Chris fell silent, his face buried in Dex’s shoulder. Dex rubbed the back of Chris’s neck in reassuring circles. Finally, Chris gave Dex a final squeeze and pulled away. “How do you do it?”

“It’s a habit now. I mean, you saw what happens when I do come out.” Dex stressed his hand through his hair, and combed it flat again with his fingers. Chris could now see that there was still a frantic edge to Dex’s gaze.

“I won’t tell anyone. But if— If at all you want me to tell the team so you don’t have to— Obviously I won’t tell anyone without your permission, but that’s an option.” At the back of his mind, Chris remembered how Lardo had offered him the same, and how he still was closeted as far as eighty percent of the team were concerned.

Dex chewed on his lips, and shook his head. “Thanks, but— It’s the thought of what could happen if everyone starts to know more than anything else.” His voice cracked, and Chris reached out to squeeze his hand again. “We’re going to be late for our classes,” Dex said.

* * *

Chris found it hard to concentrate all through his Chinese class, even though the continuation of their series on New Year traditions was pretty interesting. His mind drifted to Nursey, and to Dex, and to putting together the thing Nursey had told him over the months about his budding romance, seeing it all in a new light now that he knew that it had been Dex all along. He had no idea why he had never questioned how Nursey was spending so much time with this guy, given that he spent most of his free time with the hockey team.

The moment his class let out, he headed back to Nursey and Dex’s suite. Their roommate, Nikki, smiled brightly at him when she opened the door. “Hi! Congratulations on the playoffs!”

“Thanks. Is Nursey still in?”

She frowned and looked over her shoulder. “I didn’t think he was? I haven’t seen him all day.”

“Oh, uh. He probably is. He’s not very well. I’ll just—”

“Sure! You can go and check for yourself.”

Nursey looked up from his phone when Chris walked in, and reached an arm up towards him. Chris crawled into bed next to him, stopping only to throw the empty Pringles tube into the waste can across the room.

“Hey.”

“How was your class?” Nursey asked.

“I don’t remember. How are you?”

Nursey just shrugged.

“You want to do anything?”

Nursey sighed. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

“We could start with talking, if you want.”

“You just want deets. Anyone ever tell you you’re a relentless gossip, Chow?”

“Is it such a bad thing if I want to make sure my two best friends aren’t just together because they got themselves into a complicated mess of romance and you were afraid of what might happen if you admitted it wasn’t what you wanted?”

There was a long silence, and Chris hoped he hadn’t offended Nursey in speaking his feelings. He was genuinely worried that it may be a viable explanation, for both the secrets and for Nursey’s turnaround on a relationship he had been so worked up about that night at the volleyball game.

“You don’t  have to worry about that, C. Seriously, I— He feels it stronger than I do. I know that. He was in love with me almost before I was able to admit to myself I had any feelings for him at all. But the idea of Dex ever forcing me into something I don’t want— He wouldn’t. Okay? Maybe to begin with there was a bit of me feeling a bit like I was— I don’t know—  _ supposed  _ to let sex with him be in a certain way, or something. But we’ve talked about it a thousand times since then. We’ve— He’s never made me think I didn’t have a choice. He’s always been  _ so  _ explicit about consent and about how he doesn’t want me to be in this for anything less than me wanting it a hundred percent. I think I love him back, C.”

Chris shifted. “Does he know that?” Otherwise, he wasn’t sure how comfortable he was hearing it.

“Yeah. I mean— Well, yeah. I’ve told him I think I might. Even when he’s being melodramatic as fuck.”

Chris snorted. Of course he couldn’t say it without adding some criticism. “ _ Dex  _ is melodramatic?”

“He’s the most melodramatic.”

Chris chuckled, not believing one word of it, but he didn’t say anything else.

They had been lying there, content in each other’s silence, for fifteen minutes when Dex got back from class. He tossed Nursey a pack of Red Vines, and went to tidy away his bag.

“Aw, thanks, Dexy,” Nursey said with a grin.

“Yeah, well, if you’re not going to eat proper food,” Dex replied with a shrug, but his cheeks were pink and he was fighting a smile.

“See?” Nursey turned to Chris. “So melodramatic.”

Dex eyed up the small space left on the dorm bed, then sat down anyway, his legs over both Chris and Nursey’s ankles, just as he’d been sat when Chris had come by earlier. “How are you feeling?” he asked Nursey.

“We should get pizza for dinner.”

Dex reached over and took his hand so that he could give it a squeeze. “Pizza sounds great. Netflix?”

“I don’t know what to watch.”

“We’ve still got half a season of _The Office_.”

“I love _The Office_ ,” Chris said, absentmindedly. He should probably get going soon to leave them alone, but he felt a little trapped between Nursey, the wall, and Dex’s thighs.

“You’re staying, right, C?” Dex asked. He was flicking through his phone, no doubt ordering the pizzas. Chris looked at Nursey to check that was okay, and got a nod in response.

“Okay.”

Dex looked up, now, also at Nursey. “Can we invite Cait? I want to— Or we can just keep it us Frogs.”

“Farmer’s cool,” Nursey replied.

Dex took a deep breath, and his eyes slid over to Chris. “Can I take you up on that offer?”

“Which off— Oh. You want me to tell her?” Chris asked. “Uh… Before she gets here?”

“No, here’s good. Just—”

“Of course I’ll do it.”

Dex handed his phone over to Nursey so that he could choose his pizza toppings. “Thanks, C.”

* * *

Caitlin arrived half an hour later, carrying four boxes of pizza. “I ran into the delivery guy outside,” she explained. “I’m really hoping this one that actually has cheese on but doesn’t have pepperoni on is mine.”

“The one without pepperoni,” Dex repeated. “Don’t you mean the one with fruit on it?”

“Tomato is a fruit, so don’t even start there. Hawaiian is loads better than pepperoni.”

Dex rolled his eyes, but Chris kicked his leg up to both shut him up, and get him to move. Now that Caitlin was there, the boys had to reshuffle on the bed so that she could join them. Nursey settled between Dex and Chris, while Caitlin sat on Chris’s other side and handed the pizzas out. Dex glanced at Chris, nervously.

“So…” Chris said, trying to work out how to bring it up. “I guess our first double date is Netflix and pizza after all.”

“Netflix and chill,” Nursey corrected quietly.

“What are you talking about?” Caitlin asked, a bemused smile on her face.

“Dex and Nursey are dating. But, it’s a secret! So you can’t tell.”

Caitlin regarded her pizza with wide eyes as she processed his words. Then, she lifted her eyes. “Next time we should go to Jerry’s. I’ve been wanting to try their four person cookie dough sharing platter ever since they put it on the menu.”

“I’m pretty sure Ransom and Holster had that just the two of them,” Chris replied, but his eyes were fixed on Dex, checking that he was still okay. He and Nursey were slumped against each other, but it was hard to tell which one of them was in need of the comfort. Either way, at least Dex’s eyes weren’t wrought with distress like they had been earlier.

“I can’t justify two portions of it. Not if you’re going to keep getting me pie, as well. I’m not even in season to burn it all off again.”

"Jerry's, then," Chris said. "For our second date."

"Yeah," Dex agreed, breathlessly. He sat up a little straighter, now, and maneuvered around Nursey to arrange his laptop on the desk and put Netflix on. Chris gave Nursey a nudge with his elbow, getting a hint of a smile in response, and they turned their attention to  _ The Office. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe we're only 2 chapters from the end?? I've had a pretty emotional week too in terms of how wonderful all of you have been with lovely comments and all. For those who haven't seen, or perhaps who were worried about spoilers before so haven't read them, I posted my NurseyDex hidden scenes this week. With this chapter posted they are now completely spoiler-free, so if NurseyDex are your thing and you want to read more about how they came together in this universe I suggest reading them in the order which they are in in the [Extra Fresh Mints](http://archiveofourown.org/series/747585) series. (1 in 4 -> The Roommate). If NurseyDex isn't your thing, don't worry! Their relationship is not going to get suddenly very in your face just because Chowder knows about it.


	17. Playoffs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An incomplete list of things which nearly happened during NCAA playoff season 2015, but didn't quite transpire:
> 
> \- Chowder being persuaded to support the Aces over the Sharks  
> \- Dex growing a beard  
> \- Nursey and Dex falling out over a cup of tea  
> \- Dex pretending to be Irish for a fair chance at dibs  
> \- Betsy dying  
> \- Holster punching Jack  
> \- NHL game viewing getting prioritized over sleep, school work, and social lives. (Wait. This one may have actually happened.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for coming out willingly, but spontaneously.  
> Also, this chapter's main running theme is how playoffs are affecting the team, so there is a thread of anxiety running throughout. It's mostly subtle and, of course, manifests itself in different ways in different characters. There are no scenes depicting anxiety attacks, but there are instances of alcohol being abused as a result of the stress, and one character offers another prescription medication, though it isn't taken.

Nursey was in classes Monday, and debating current affairs with Dex and Shitty Tuesday, though he turned down the offer to watch the Sharks vs. Aces game with Dex, Chris, Ollie and Wicky Wednesday evening. His absence, along with Caitlin’s, meant that Chris was outnumbered by those supporting Kent Parson (or the Aces in general in Wicky’s case) over the Sharks. For most of the game, Dex and Ollie debated whether it was a betrayal against the Bruins and Capitals respectively to want the Aces to do well. When Wicky pointed out that it made sense to want to support someone they had met, Chris was almost swayed. It was disappointing to see his team lose, but Parse played well and it was pretty cool watching his post-game interview knowing that they had partied together.

“Anyway,” Ollie said when the interviews ended. He rubbed at his stubble, a pained twist on his face as he suppressed a yawn. “You two get out. It’s bedtime.”

“Yeah,” Dex agreed, with a glance at his watch. “Fucking West coast games.”

Wicky had already disappeared into the bathroom, so they shouted their goodbyes to him, and left the dorm room.

Chris had a snap from Caitlin of Makena by the Fifty Shades of Gray poster, with the caption  _ we changed our minds about which movie to watch.  _ He replied with a picture of the sidewalk and a laughing emoji. He held the camera up to Dex.

“Dex give me a sad face.”

Dex’s expression was closer to confusion when he asked, “Why?” but Chris took the photo anyway.

“Because.” He sent the picture to Cait and the SMH, along with a string of sad emojis and  _ sharks lost. _

Before he had time to close the app, his phone beeped with a text.

 

> _ Nursey_  
>  dex looks devastated by this loss  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Chris_  
>  He can’t believe it  
>  Did you do anything tonight?”  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Nursey_  
>  nah  
>  jello came round for a bit but then holster tivo and mortzy turned up after their purim thing and it got a bit much  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Chris_  
>  Are you okay, though?  
>    
> 
> 
> _Nursey  
>  _ yeah  
>  holster dragged them all off to go harass ransom about his date

 

“Tell him he doesn’t have to stay up for me,” Dex said, when he worked out who Chris was texting.

“He was hanging out with some of the guys until not that long ago. What time was Holster and that lot’s thing at the Hillel?”

Dex shrugged. “It was dinner, wasn’t it? That was ages ago, C. They never finish this late.”

Chris looked at the time on his phone screen. It was almost three in the morning. “Huh.”

 

> _ Chris_  
>  Hey, Dex says go to sleep  
>  And I just saw the time and we’re nearly at my dorm  
>  Not that I don’t want to talk to you!  
>    
> 
> 
> _ Nursey  
>  _ chill  
>  night, c

 

Chris deleted the explanation he had been typing, and sent a heart instead.

* * *

Jack compensated for their mini break from practice by working them to the grind the next week, but the mere thought of playoffs meant nobody complained. They pushed themselves in practice, and somehow still found the energy to blast Nicki Minaj as they changed afterwards. The Saturday a week before playoffs they had an unofficial team breakfast at the Haus and a morning of watching videos of their first round opposition and Chris arrived to Shitty raving about Jack’s playoff beard. Chris tensed up. Nobody had mentioned not shaving, because all of them already knew the tradition. He usually shaved once a week, as he didn’t need to shave at all and had to balance the fact that doing so had a tendency to dry his skin out and leave a rash, and the feelings of dysphoria over his lack of facial hair if he never shaved. Tomorrow would mark two weeks since they qualified for the playoffs, and since Chris’s last shave. Now, looking around the kitchen, he couldn’t ignore that of the twenty-three hockey players squashed into the room and squabbling over cupcakes — twenty- _ two,  _ he amended mentally when he noted Nursey’s absence — fifteen had a good amount of scruff on them. Chris ran his hand along his jawbone self-consciously. It still felt smooth, so he dropped his hands into his lap.

“I can’t grow one either, you know,” Dex said, giving him a nudge. “I just look ridiculous. At least you don’t have that.”

“Yeah, but ridiculous or not, you’ve got  _ something.  _ It doesn’t look like you could have shaved this morning.”

“Well, look at Bitty, then. Or even some actual NHL players. Parse’s wasn’t great last year. Better than it was back in 2010, but still not great. It’s okay.”

Chris looked down at his bacon and eggs. However much he tried to see the truth in Dex’s words, it was hard to believe them enough to feel better.

Dex sighed and stood, clapping a hand to Chris’s back. “Anyway, I told Nursey I’d have a cup of tea waiting for him when he got here.”

“Yeah, where is he?” Ransom asked, leaning across the table to join their conversation.

“Uh, overslept. Needed a shower. Has to pick up a prescription. Combination of the three, take your pick.” Dex scratched his neck awkwardly, which Chris took to mean Nursey still felt rough.

“Bitty!” Holster shouted, drawing Chris’s attention as Dex retreated to the stove. “Sit the fuck down, bro, I’m tired just watching you. Eat your breakfast.”

“Not everyone’s had something!” Bitty argued.

“Yeah, and you’re one of those people. Sit.”

“Mama Birkholtz would be so proud of you right now,” Ransom commented when Bitty complied. “Such  _ authority _ .”

“Don’t.”

Chris blinked at the two of them. Before he could ask, Nursey dropped into Dex’s vacated seat.

“Bitty, stay,” Holster said when Bitty pushed his chair out again.

“I don’t appreciate your tone, mister,” Bitty retorted, but he settled into his chair and stayed quiet as Nursey picked some cold toast off the rack in the middle of the table. He offered Chris a weak smile when nudged, and asked Mortzy to pass the peanut butter. Chris fell silent and ate his own breakfast, listening to the chatter around him.

They had all finished breakfast, except for Nursey with his tea, when Jack pulled up a whiteboard so he could tell them all what to look out for in the videos. A hacking sound cut him off.

“Poindexter,” Nursey said, clearly trying to stay chill but his nose was screwed up in distaste. “This tea, uh, you didn't just use cinnamon, huh?”

Dex blinked. “No. You told me it's not supposed to just be one spice. It should be a mix. I put in cardamom like you said, and cloves.”

“Good, and what else?” Nursey asked pointedly.

“Some turmeric and paprika. Cayenne pepper. Some salt to bring the flavours out. Uh. And, uh, ginger”

“There it is.”

“Come on, Nurse, do we really have to do the ginger jokes today?” Dex asked, oblivious to the number of people who had stopped to stare at him in horror.

“How much turmeric?” TiVo asked.

“What—?” Dex frowned.

“He put fucking salt in my tea and you’re focusing on the turmeric?” Nursey asked TiVo.

TiVo rolled his eyes. “Salt  _ and  _ turmeric  _ and  _ cayenne pepper. It's tea, Poindexter, not curry. You put paprika in it, too did you say?”

“Should I… not have done? But… Nursey loves paprika.”

“I do and paprika in tea can be good but when I say a mix of spices I mean four or five not the entire cabinet. And no  _ salt. _ ”

“I mean, my mom always adds salt to tea and it’s actually—” Gozer started, but he fell silent at Nursey’s glare.

Dex opened his mouth and closed it again. “Do you want me to make another?”

“Nah, it's chill, I'll have some orange juice or something.”

“Nursey—”

Chris got up to get a glass of juice, and placed a hand on Dex’s elbow as he passed. He tried to convey in a look to let it go and not take offence, but he wasn’t sure if his message got through, even though Dex stopped arguing.

“Maybe it's time to head into the other room?” Bitty suggested.

* * *

Between the higher stakes of NHL games as playoffs approached, their own practices, and trying to stay on top of classes, none of them had much time for socializing. Chris only saw Caitlin in chemistry classes, and one evening when she stayed over to watch the Sharks play the Penguins. The bags under Dex’s eyes were a constant, now, as he tried to fit in a work schedule too, and it was hard to tell whether his foul mood in the following days were from exhaustion or stress.

Despite the added pressure and tension, their winning streak from the end of regular season followed them into the playoffs, pushing them past the first round with ease, and the Friday game left Chris the entire weekend to catch up on sleep. It would be even harder to keep up with schoolwork the next week, with a game on the Thursday which they would have to travel to, but it was the last week before Samwell’s Spring Break so Chris didn’t worry too much about homework.

He didn't, however, take shirking responsibilities to the same extreme as some. Monday lunchtime, the frogs and Bitty were eating when Ransom and Holster crashed through the door, stumbling and giggling, each with a can of beer in hand, and wearing Boston Celtics tops.

“Hey, hey, Bits.” Ransom said. “You should make a leprechaun-shaped pie.”

“So we can like eat it,” Holster agreed. He raised his can of Guinness in a silent toast to Ransom for the idea.

“Are you two high?” Bitty asked.

“Shits said we're not allowed during playoffs,” Ransom said.

“Because Jack’s ass would be wasted in prison,” Holster added.

“But you've had how much to drink?”

A deep frown formed on Holster’s forehead and he started counting on his fingers. “Hold this,” he told Ransom, handing over the Guinness so that his second hand was free, but he simply proceeded to pull Ransom’s fingers up to add them to his count.

“Okay, okay, I get the picture.” Bitty pushed Holster into a seat, and when Ransom sat as well, he waved a spoon at them, and at the three frogs. “I’ll make y’all a pie but no more drink. Jack might still murder you for this.”

Ransom looked outraged. “But Bits. We haven’t gone to find Irish people to kiss yet, and it’s rude not to drink with them.”

“Are you Irish?” Nursey asked Dex, who squinted at him suspiciously.

“No.”

“Damn.” Holster dragged the word out. “It would have been so easy if we could just kiss Poindexter.”

Dex went scarlet, and shot Nursey a glare. His jaw was set and Chris suspected he was biting down on a retort.

“Why do you have to kiss someone?” Chris asked.

“St Paddy’s Day! It’s  _ tradition.” _

“Kiss Ollie,” Bitty suggested. “Can someone beat some eggs for me?”

Dex washed his hands so he could help, Holster and Ransom stared at each other.

“O’meara. He has to be Irish,” Ransom said.

“Not necessarily. But no harm in asking, is there?”

“You’re just going to text him and ask him to kiss you?” Chris asked, as Holster’s fingers flew across his phone screen.

“Of course not! We have to check he’s Irish first.”

“Bro, Ollie would so be up for it. Tell him it's for dibs.”

Dex dropped an eggshell on the floor. “Wait. Seriously, that's something you'd give dibs for?”

Nursey snorted, as Ransom pointed out, “You already said you're not Irish, bro.”

“I'm not, but—”

“Ollie’s half-Irish. Is that enough?” Holster asked, looking at his phone.

“Sure,” Ransom said. Dex’s mouth pulled into a frown and he bent to clear up the egg.

Bitty and Dex had sat down to wait for the pie to cook when Ollie strode into the room and swooped down to kiss Holster full on the mouth. Taken aback, Chris stared between the two of them, and Wicky who leaned in the doorway. When their eyes crossed, Wicky shrugged.

“You better be keeping track of all these things I’ve done for you when you’ve drunkenly promised me dibs,” Ollie said.

“Don’t doubt us, bro,” Ransom answered. He grasped a handful of Ollie’s t-shirt and pulled him off Holster. Ollie landed in Ransom’s lap, and their lips slid together.

“Oh my.” Bitty’s cheeks were scarlet when he turned to Wicky, his back on Ransom and Ollie. “Is he drunk too?”

“No. Do I smell burning?”

Now he mentioned it, a smoky smell filled the air. Bitty spun to look at the oven in horror. “It shouldn’t be ready for half an hour.”

When Dex opened the oven door, a puff of black smoke escaped, and something crackled. He rescued the pie and left it on the side. “I’ll look at her when she’s cooled down, but I can’t keep patching her up much longer, Bits. It’s happening more often now.”

“Please just tell me she'll be okay till the end of playoffs,” Bitty begged.

Dex frowned down at the oven. “I'll do what I can.”

“This semester is going to be the death of me,” Bitty grumbled.

* * *

With the roadie coming up, Chris took his nap on the Haus couch a day early. He woke to find Lardo staring at him.

“Did I oversleep? The bus is going?”

“Ten minutes,” Lardo replied. Chris relaxed. He only had to put his shoes and coat on. “I booked the hotel. We’re having rooms of three or four. Who do you want to be with? Me and Shits? Or me and Bits, or… well, who?”

“Nursey and Dex.” It wouldn’t cause a problem with the tradition of d-men rooming together, and having suggested it, he thought of all the reasons why it would be better for Dex to not have to worry about who else was in their room.

Lardo frowned. “But Dex…”

Chris squinted at her, but she didn’t finish her sentence. He thought over her words and remembered that asking people who they want to room with wasn’t the way Lardo handled things, a fact which almost escaped him because of having always had singles. “Oh. No, Dex knows. We talked a couple of weeks ago.” Not for the first time, he thought about telling the rest of the team. His dilemma was how to bring it up. 

Lardo stared down at the clipboard in her lap. “And it was okay?”

“He was really cool about it.”

Lardo scribbled something on her clipboard and stood. “Okay, you three then. That might make things a bit easier actually. Get ready. I'm rounding everyone up.”

* * *

Chris didn’t want Dex to be caught by surprise when Lardo handed out the keys at the hotel, but he had never seen Nursey so pale as they drove to Logan International. Thinking of the tree they had climbed during their first semester, he put off the conversation about their room arrangements. The flight to Detroit saw them uncomfortably trying to ignore the tension building, with some occasional pretending to sleep on Nursey’s part, even though his headphones blared music loud enough for Chris to make out the lyrics, and Nursey’s fingers tapped in double time on his knee. They were in the hired bus which would take them to South Bend, Indiana by the time Chris told them. In return he got a warning that Nursey snored and Dex couldn't sleep still. “Or he used to,” Nursey explained. “The meds seem to have calmed him down a bit now so he doesn't fidget as much.”

* * *

They huddled in the foyer of the hotel while Lardo and Coach Hall booked them in.

“Rooms of three or four because of the cost and availability,” Lardo told them, as she handed a key to Jack. “So room 286, seniors room. Jack, Shitty, Hardy, Gozer. Room 287—”

“Mortzy’s not a real senior,” Holster sang.

“Because defensemen are the bane of my life,” Lardo muttered. Holster’s mouth dropped open in mock rage, but Lardo ignored him and threw the next keys to TiVo. “Jell-O, you're with Mortzy and TiVo in 287. 288, Ransom, Holster and Bitty. And also me. Froggies in 289.”

Chris caught the keys, and Dex tugged on his elbow to pull him toward the elevator.

“Wait,” Jell-O hissed. “Nursey, this place has a prayer room.”

“No shit?”

“Bros, if you're running off already, dinner in half an hour. Meet here at eight,” Lardo said, as she pressed the keys to room 290 into Wicky’s hand.

In their room, Dex placed his bag next to the closet, took out a wash bag, and disappeared into the bathroom. Seconds later, the shower started. Chris picked an end bed and plugged his phone in while he caught up on his notifications and texted Caitlin.

* * *

The evening found the three of them crowded on Dex’s bed in the middle of the room, streaming the Rangers vs. Blackhawks game.

“Fuck, come on, don’t break the streak against the  _ Hawks,”  _ Nursey muttered in frustration throughout the third period.

“Do you think it’s a pressure thing?” Dex asked, frowning at the ceiling. “Like, they know there’s been talk about them being favorites for the playoffs. They’re top of the division at the moment, and they just had a five game winning streak. Maybe the pressure just…” He trailed off.

“You say that like Chicago aren’t probably going to end up in the playoffs too. Trust me, I don’t  _ want  _ them to, but it’s looking that way, especially if there’s not another goal in the next ten minutes.”

“Rangers will still be top in the tables,” Dex reminded him.

“That depends on the Ducks game, for the league as a whole.” Chris winced. He, for one, wanted the Ducks to get the extra points tonight if it meant the Sharks had a better chance of pulling ahead of the Kings before the playoffs.

“Still,” Dex said, wriggling until he lay between them. “Winning streaks don’t last forever.”

Nursey stilled. “Dex.”

Chris buried his teeth into his lower lip. It was the same worry he had. “What if the pressure is too much?” he asked.

“Don’t you start,” Nursey said.

“But—”

Nursey shut the lid of his laptop.

“We can’t think about the streak, or the pressure, or whether this game means more to us than other games, okay? We’ve got this. We’re a stronger team than them. They barely scraped through into the playoffs, and we’ve spent hours assessing their play, and our captain is Jack fucking Zimmermann. So both of you  _ stop,  _ and—” He took in a ragged breath, and his eyes widened, as if he had only just realized he was talking.

“Nursey,” Chris said. He rubbed Nursey’s shoulder, and pulled him into a hug. Dex whined from underneath them, and Nursey pulled away from Chris to put his laptop on the floor.

“I’m nervous about it, too,” he admitted. “It’s terrifying, but if I let myself get stressed out about it—”

“It’s just another game,” Chris said, trying to convince himself as much as Nursey.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we should sleep.” Chris slid out of the bed and pottered over to his own. It wasn’t even late, but after a day of travelling, and with the prospect of a quarterfinal game the next day, followed by the overnight return to Samwell, it was important they sleep well, so neither Dex nor Nursey argued.

* * *

Chris woke early the morning of their game and couldn't force himself back to sleep. His mind was plagued with thoughts of game plays and concerns about the heightened pressure now that any loss would result in the last game of the season, and their seniors’ last game at Samwell. He tried to repeat the mantra that it was just another game. Just one more game. Just a fun, casual game, against the one team left between them and the Frozen Four. No big deal.

Those worries followed him throughout the morning: as he watched Nursey’s resistance to waking up; as he reassured Lardo that Dex and Nursey weren't arguing; as he worked his way through pre-game routines. Somehow, though, he turned out to have the right level of nervousness, because it helped him to focus on the game without becoming a distraction.

He traded off with Vizzy for the second period, but it was to preserve his energy rather than because of poor play. On the contrary, Samwell had scored and the closer it got to Chris’s turn to return to the ice for the final twenty minutes, the more likely a shutout game looked.

The frogs were selected for sound bites, alongside a few of the upperclassmen.

“How does it feel to get a shutout during the playoffs?” the reporter asked, shoving a voice recorder in Chris’s face.

“Oh, well I can't take all the credit for it! And it doesn't feel so much for me than the shutout I got during regular season. I always play for the whole team, not just for me, but now every game we're really playing for our seniors! I'm glad I could pull off a performance which does them justice and gets us into the next round.” He smiled awkwardly, until the reporter moved on. Nursey pulled a face at him as Dex talked about the SMH’s teamwork.

By the time they got to the locker room, the rest of the team were on their way out out. The upperclassmen had quick showers and grabbed their bags to follow, but Chris still had to wash and Nursey’s kit wasn’t packed. Dex leaned against the door while the other two frogs rushed around to get ready. After Chris’s shower, he and Nursey crowded around the mirror so that Nursey could sort out his hair, and Chris could brush his teeth.

“What’s that?” Nursey asked, prodding Chris in the cheek.

“S’for cleaning under my braces.”

“No. This!” He tipped Chris’s chin with his thumb so Chris could see the few black hairs. Chris pulled his chin out of Nursey’s hand and leaned towards the mirror to have a closer look. Sure enough, there were a few whiskers of facial hair scattering his jaw — the first he’d ever had in his life.

“Are you two nearly done?” Dex asked from the door.

“Bro. Dex. Babe.  _ William. _ Christopher here has playoff fuzz.”

Dex didn’t move, but waited for Chris to turn to him. “So he does,” he said, with a smile. “Who knows, C, maybe this time next year you’ll have a full beard for playoffs.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Chris replied automatically, but as he ran his fingers along his chin, excitement bubbled up inside him.  _ He had facial hair. _

* * *

There was the usual chaos getting onto the bus, but Chris left Dex and Nursey to do an evaluation of the bus while he went to tell Bitty his news before everyone settled down enough to notice how happy he was over a few whiskers. “Bitty! Bitty, look. Playoff beard!”

Jack raised an eyebrow from across the aisle to Bitty and leaned forwards to have a look, but Chris kept his focus on Bitty.

“Right now it’s just playoff fuzz! But it’s coming along”

“Yes, it is!” Bitty agreed, and though Chris was sure he was saying it to be nice, Bitty looked genuinely happy for him. “Jack.”

“Oh yeah. That’s a good beard, Chowder.”

This time, Chris knew Jack was lying, but he didn’t care. He turned around in his seat and leaned in to join Dex and Nursey’s conversation.

“Okay, how about finding a person’s been living in your attic, or you have mice.”

“Bro, but mice are cute! That’s easy,” Nursey said, rolling his eyes.

“Mice are pests.”

“But you’d still go for the mice, wouldn’t you? Because you’re against finding a random person in your attic. Which is why it doesn’t work. Some bugs I’d obviously go for the person. Mice are cute. They’d be chill.”

Dex tilted his head, thinking about it. “How about cockroaches?”

“Now you’ve got yourself a debate. How many roaches?”

“A thousand?”

Chris flinched and Nursey recoiled in horror. “Definitely a person.”

“You’re still allowed to call an exterminator,” Dex qualified. 

“Bro, but still. Anyway, that’s against my morals. A person might be chill.”

“Or they might murder you,” Dex told him.

Chris leaned back and closed his eyes. It would be half an hour before they got to the airport and rather than listen to Dex and Nursey talk about roaches the whole time, he figured he might as well get some extra sleep.

* * *

Chris saw Caitlin off at the airport for her Spring Break vacation with Ally, but he barely had time to wish he could have gone to Nassau when his week was filled with catching up on work missed when they were on their roadie, and preparing for the next game. Dex dragged him and Nursey to the library between practices, where the three of them agonized over trying to decipher other people’s notes. Later, with the dining hall being closed for Spring Break, they would go to the Haus for dinner.

On Thursday, their sushi order had arrived when Nursey asked, “What did the sushi roll say to the bee?”

“I don’t know,” Chris said. Nursey had found a terrible pun in the book he was writing an essay on that morning, and ever since had been coming up with more, much to Dex’s contempt.

“Wasabi.” Nursey grinned.

Dex pushed his shoulder. “Why are you like this?”

“I’m hilarious.”

“You’re jokes are me, Nurse,” Shitty told him.

“They’re you?” Chris asked in confusion. Lardo groaned, and he realized his mistake.

“Yes. They’re Shitty.”

“That’s awful, stop it,” Lardo said, kicking Shitty in the shin. “Guys, I thought we’d made this clear before. No puns near Shitty.”

Nursey laughed. “That’s literally never been mentioned. This is amazing.”

“It’s  _ shitty,”  _ Ransom stage-whispered. “Lardo banned them, because of Shitty.” Shitty sat up straight, looking delighted.

Lardo covered his mouth with her hand. “It’s my birthday, you’re not allowed to make any puns,” she hissed at him.

Ransom and Holster nudged each other a couple of times, then Holster leaned forward. “Nurse, I keep wanting to tell you how well you’re pulling your playoff beard off. Top frog, you are.” He winked.

“Don’t,” Lardo warned.

Dex groaned. “Top frog, really? That’s the best you—”

“Wait,” Ransom interrupted. “Wait, bro don’t do that. He’s pulling it off?” he asked Holster, then looked at Nursey. “Bro, use a razor. And you have to wait until after playoffs.”

Holster doubled-up laughing, which spoiled the punchline a little, but the two of them still bumped fists for it.

Lardo shook her head in exasperation. “I can’t stop this, can I?”

“Good Lord,” Bitty said, getting up to go to the kitchen.

“Bitty’s not very good at puns, so he’s a bit bitter about this conversation,” Holster said.

“Who wants Holster’s peanut butter cup?” Bitty called through the door.

“Peanut bitter,” Holster muttered.

“You can talk,” Ransom said. “You put the ‘bi’ in ‘bitter’.”

“I put it in Birkholtz, too. The rest of my family are all just Rkholtz.”

“I don’t know how anyone can keep a straight face, right now,” Nursey said through a snort.

“Hey, people can’t help being straight,” Ollie joined, leaning over to ruffle Chris’s hair. Chris knocked his hand away.

“Do you have 83 protons, too?” Ransom asked.

Everyone looked around at each other, trying to figure out the joke. Dex, who had been trying desperately not to react, pulled out his phone to Google the periodic table.

“Rans, get the fuck out with your science jokes nobody understands.”

“Bismuth,” Dex read. “The symbol on the periodic table is ‘Bi’.”

“Hands up if you have 83 protons?” Ransom said, with a hand in the air.

“It’s no good if you have to explain it,” Holster said, though Nursey seemed to disagree, given how hard he was laughing.

“I have one,” Jack said. He looked a little surprised when the attention of the room turned on him, and he blushed before saying, “A golfer bought two pairs of trousers in case he got a hole in one.”

“Well, as a golfer you do have to have good fore-sight,” Ransom replied.

Holster rolled his eyes, but his grin grew wider. “Your golf puns are driving a wedge between us.”

“Guys, please stop,” Nursey said, clutching his side now as he laughed. “I’m laughtose intolerant.”

“You’re not even lactose intolerant,” Dex mumbled. “You’d literally go into anaphylactic shock if you had milk. You’re  _ allergic.” _

“Technically, my body is still intolerant to lactose.  _ So  _ intolerant it would stop working if I had any.”

Bitty returned with homemade peanut butter cups for all of them, and handed Lardo hers first.

“Aww! Bitty! They’ve got ducks on!”

Bitty smiled at her. “Happy birthday. Nursey, yours don’t, I’m afraid. This one's for you.”

Nursey quickly sat up and held his hand out. “I doughnut know what I’d do without you, Bits. Or your food.”

Bitty’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want to find out?”

“Nah, it’s chill. Thanks for asking. But you’re the reason I—” He squinted. “You’re the reason, either way.”

“The Reese-on?” Holster asked, and Nursey lifted a hand for a fist bump.

“This is really good, Bitty!” Chris said, through a mouthful of chocolate and peanut butter.

“Aw, thank-you, Chowder. At least someone here knows how to give a compliment without it being a joke. You’re a sweetheart.”

Chris nodded seriously. “Would you say I transcend expectations?”

Bitty squinted at him.

Nursey snorted again. “Bro, that was a bit transparent.”

“But I haven’t got any children,” Chris replied with a smirk. Dex choked, and Chris's grin widened. “Was that a laugh?”

Dex shook his head.

“It was so a laugh. It  _ transpires  _ that Chowder is our winner,” Nursey said. He reached across and lifted Chris’s hand into the air.

“Uh…” The hesitation in Holster’s voice reminded Chris of their company, and he tensed. “What… exactly was the pun there?”

“I’ll translate it for you,” Nursey said, but he stopped talking when Dex tensed.

Chris grabbed Dex’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m trans. The pun is I’m a trans man but I’m not a trans parent.”

The silence lasted longer than he would have liked, even though it was probably no time at all. Bitty was someone he might have expected to break the tension, but he nibbled quietly on his peanut butter cup. Shitty glared around the room, daring anybody to say anything negative, but he also stayed silent.

“Uh, well, now I’ve got that off my chest,” Chris said awkwardly.

The room broke into laughter again, a few people sat nearby patting Chris on the back, or ruffling his hair.

“Bro, that was brilliant,” Holster said, wiping his eyes. “Amazing.”

“I can’t believe you just came out with a pun. You’re my hero,” Ransom told him.

“You just came out with a pun, too,” Dex told him. “You and Holster, and kind of Ollie, too?”

Ransom and Holster both looked at each other, then at Ollie, who shrugged. “Bro, you didn’t know we’re bi?” Ransom asked.

Dex stuttered. His eyes were wide, and Chris squeezed his hand again, trying to be encouraging. When he didn’t reply, Chris piped up, “I didn’t know, either. It’s cool. It’s not like you have to have a big coming out, or like you even have to state it explicitly if you don’t want to, but it’s never come up. Even when Dex was being a bit disorientated about sexuality at Samwell.”

Nursey snorted. Chris slipped his phone out of his pocket so he could text him.

 

> **Frogs Group Chat  
> ** _ Chris_  
>  Nursey’s dexorientated  
>    
> 
> 
> _Nursey  
>  _ sexual disorientation  
>  sounds about right

 

Bitty coughed, and stood. “There’s more peanut butter cups if anyone wants one.”

Chris gave Dex’s hand a last squeeze, before following Bitty to the kitchen.

“Bitty?”

“You can definitely have another, Chowder. I’m real proud of you.”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be? I already knew I wasn’t the only person on the team who’s not straight, I just didn’t—”

Chris gently took the plate of peanut butter cups out of Bitty’s hand and pulled him into a hug. “I don’t think it even occurred to them before today that they  _ weren’t  _ out to the team. I mean, they were all making out with each other last week so we probably—” he trailed off. Bitty probably didn't need to hear that they should have realized earlier. “They just are who they are.”

“I’m sorry. I’m being so silly. Just everything about this month has been so strange, and this weekend might be our last roadie, and—”

“Bitty. It won’t be our last roadie. I think we’re going to get through, but even if we don’t, we’ve got next year! And the year after. And Jack and Shitty— You think they’ll never come and see us play? Hey, I bet if you ask, Shitty will organize a road trip for you  _ just  _ so it’s not your last roadie with him!”

Bitty wiped his eyes as he pulled away. “Thanks, Chowder. I— I don’t know why I forgot that y’all’ll still be here.”

“You’ve always got us.”

Bitty smiled weakly, took a deep breath, and plastered a grin across his face as he picked up the plate of peanut butter cups and walked into the other room. “Okay, who’s having another?”

* * *

Jack shooed everyone out of the Haus early, because of their roadie the next day, but they spent another ten minutes by the door saying goodbyes. The whole team wanted to individually acknowledge Chris’s coming out and let him know they always had his back. When only the frogs and the Hausmates remained, Chris stepped off the porch, but Jack called him back.

“Can I talk to you a second, Chowder?”

It was with a sense of foreboding that Chris waved Dex and Nursey on. His captain was the only person who had not congratulated him or offered him a hug, and Chris expected a conversation about his place on the team.

“I guess I know now why you didn’t go in the draft. I wondered.”

Chris frowned. “What? I didn't enter the draft. They'd never—”

Jack stepped closer, making Chris look him in the eyes. “It’s not going to be easy, Chow, but you’re NHL material. I wish— I— I want to play against you one day. Or maybe even together, again, eh?” He let out a laugh, but Chris didn’t join in.

“You— You think I could play in the NHL?” His voice caught on the words.

Jack smiled. “I really do.” He held up a hand for a fist bump, and Chris knocked his knuckles against it in a daze. “Now go and rest up before tomorrow.”

* * *

Chris dreamed that night he was goalkeeper for the Sharks and they were playing the Habs for the Stanley Cup. For some reason, Jack was on the Montreal team and joined by the rest of the Samwell team, except for Nursey, Dex and Bitty who wore teal. There were no other Sharks players on the ice.

“Thanks for always having my back, Chris,” Bitty said. Dex and Nursey were holding hands. There was a rainbow coming through Faber’s windows. Ollie blew a kiss before he took a shot on goal.

* * *

The weekend passed in the usual hockey blur. One minute, Chris was on the bus trying to shake himself out of dreamland and convince himself they were all one team playing in the NCAA, and the next he was on the ice. Every time he slapped the puck from his net, he muttered, “NHL.” Whether it was as possible as Jack thought, he had his doubts, but it drove him on. Playing at TD Garden helped him to believe it.

“Bro! Didn't I tell you I'd get you a goal for your birthday?” Holster yelled in the locker room between periods.

“Bro!” Ransom shouted and the team cheered. They were so close to the championships.

He had played hours and hours of hockey, he was sure. It was Saturday night and the clock ticked into second overtime. Too much more and exhaustion would get the better of him (man, did he have to make sure he did some stamina training over the summer), but it was okay so long as Ransom and Holster kept the puck the other side of the center line. The starting lines were wonderful to watch. Chris so rarely got to watch them instead of the puck, and he took the time to appreciate it. They danced around each other, the puck sliding effortlessly from Wagner, to Hardy, to Holster, to Ransom, to Jack, back to Holster, to Wagner, to Jack, to Ransom, to Holster, to—

Lights flashed. A horn blared. Holster span into Ransom’s waiting arms and they dragged Jack into the celly, fists pumping the air. Chris stared at the scoreboard. Hardy grabbed onto him and pulled him over to center ice where he ended up squashed between Ransom and Holster.

“We're in the final!”

“We're in the final!”

“WE'RE IN THE FINAL!!”

* * *

They celebrated in the hotel bar, until Jack pointed out that tomorrow would be their only day to recover before classes on Monday. Then, Jack and a couple of other guys went to bed and the rest of them snuck out to a nearby club. For every glass of water Dex plied them with, Shitty bought another round of shots. When the clubs kicked them out (for rowdiness or closing, none of them were sober enough to be sure), they all piled into Ransom and Holster’s room where they toasted everyone on the team, and their win, and Ransom’s birthday, and anything else that occurred to them as toast worthy.

They slept when they got back to Samwell.

* * *

Nobody's sleep schedules had recovered, nor had their bodies from double overtime, but as students they weren’t going to miss a prepaid meal, especially not a team breakfast when they were still riding the high of a win, so everyone went to the dining hall Monday morning. The noise they were met with made Chris jump, and he looked for the source of the commotion.

“Is that… for us?” Dex asked. Every table clapped and cheered. Out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw someone running over. Though he was slow to realize who it was, his reflexes worked faster, and he opened his arms and caught her as she flung herself at him.

“Oh my God congratulations!” Caitlin screamed in his ear. Chris laughed and pulled her tight against his body.

“Thanks! I missed you!”

“I missed you too! Oh my God, I wish I could have been there. You were so amazing. I streamed all your games of course but Saturday night. Fuck. You were on fucking fire, and now! You're in the final! I'm so proud! I wish we could print off gifs and have, like, Harry Potter pictures. I'd totally frame that save, when he flicked it up to the top corner. You know the one I mean? When you were still in the splits from the save just before and you just flicked your wrist up and bam, saved again. It was beautiful.”

“I still don't know how I did it!”

She rolled her eyes fondly. “Stop being so modest. You were amazing.” She kissed him on the cheek, and glanced over to where the rest of the team were filling up plates. “I'll let you get your food. We'll save you a table!”

Chris grinned as she ran back to the mostly-vacated volleyball table, and went to the breakfast bar, where he tried to catch up with the conversation.

“So nutmeg and cinnamon are musts, right? And then cloves are good, and ginger, but—”

“Dex, chill, bro. It's not that rigid. You don't have to put cinnamon in it. My sister hates cinnamon in tea,” Nursey said, piling fruit into a bowl.

“But—”

“It's okay, Dexy,” Nursey chirped. “You can do other things. Spices will never be your forte. Let it go. I'll make my own tea.”

“They're more like his pianissimo,” Holster joined. A bread roll hit him in the side of the face, and Lardo bit into a second roll as she walked to the table Caitlin, March and April were sat at.

* * *

Ditching classes for the day went without saying, so Chris and Caitlin went to Chris’s dorm, where they lazily made out on the bed, until she pulled away.

“I got you a present. Do you want it now?”

“Hmm?” Chris asked, sitting up.

“I’ll go and get it! Can I take your key?”

“Sure. Hurry back.”

He smiled after her as she closed the door. He might as well rest his eyes while he waited.

* * *

He woke up again two hours later. Caitlin sat by his feet, a book in one hand and her phone in the other.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

She grinned at him. “I don’t mind. Sleep if you need to sleep.”

“No,” Chris whined. “I missed you.” He cracked a stiff bone in his spine and shuffled so he could sit up. Caitlin tilted her head towards him as he ran kisses along her jaw and caught her lower lip between his teeth. Her breath tickled his lips, and he slipped his fingers under the hem of her tank top.

“Fuck, I missed you, too,” Caitlin said. “But, let me give you your present before you fall asleep again.”

“I didn’t sign up for this chirping.”

“You kind of did.”

She pressed her lips to his smile, pulled away again and leaned down to pick a shopping bag off the floor. “So, firstly here’s a postcard. Sorry I didn’t post it. This was cheaper.”

Chris laughed. “That's okay. I'll read it when you're not here and pretend.”

She grinned back. “Okay. And here's some candy because who goes away and doesn't bring back candy?”

“Hershey’s kisses!”

“I wanted to get gummy sharks, but I wasn’t sure whether you could eat them.”

“They’re not too bad! Except my orthodontist thinks they are so maybe these are better.”

Caitlin chuckled. “And finally, your main present.”

It was a mug with a sunset beach design on it, the colors all soft baby pinks and light blues over white sand and breaking waves.

“The colors reminded me of—”

“Trans pride!” Chris said. He put the mug on his desk and beamed at it.

“We went to that beach, too. Ally and me. And when we were there I kept thinking of you because… well mostly because I missed you, but also you'd sent me that message about coming out to the team and I was really happy for you and then  _ All of Me _ came on and it made me think of Winter Screw and then I thought about you and I realized—”

Chris waited for the end of her sentence, but it never came. She looked at him with a mixture of fondness and apprehension, and Chris felt a rush of affection for her. It had only been a week, but seeing her again made him see how much he had missed her. It made him wince because she had bought him all these wonderful presents, and he had got her nothing. He was yet to take up those ASL lessons for her, and he had no idea how the semester had flown by so fast and there was such little time left. Still all he knew were some basic conversation and the signs Caitlin had taught him so that they could communicate during sex. And one other thing he had looked up out of curiosity.

It was that he signed now, pointing at himself, then crossing his arms across his chest, and finishing with a gesture towards her. His breathing was shallow, and his shoulders were tense as he awaited her reaction, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off her. His heart swelled with what he felt for her; with how beautiful she was, and how she always knew when to call him Christopher, and how he wished he could give her the world.

Her eyes shone and she reached across to brush her thumb across his cheekbone. “I love you, too.”

Chris choked out a relieved laugh, and pressed his forehead to hers. “I love you,” he repeated against her lips. They passed kisses between them, pulling on each other’s clothes to try and close the gap between them. As they pulled away from each other, they tugged off their tops.

“You’re not too tired?” Caitlin asked, unhooking a cochlear implant transmitter from her ear.

Chris stared at her, pausing a search through his bottom drawer. The twitch of her lips betrayed her. Chris laughed and flicked a condom into her lap. Her own laugh was a song to his ears.

* * *

Monday morning’s post-sex haze blurred into a lazy afternoon of emailing professors from bed, which became an evening of homework and on Tuesday Chris could no longer take things slowly. His day was jam-packed with practice and school and video watching, and when he got a text from Ransom about watching the Bruins game at the Haus, he had to decline in favor of a late night trip to the library. On Wednesday, he fell asleep before the Sharks game started, and on Thursday he almost begrudged being at the Haus when it cut into the little time he got with Caitlin. It was good, though, to be with his friends and having an evening which for once didn’t revolve around hockey, even if they were sat in the dark. They watched Holster digging through cupboards with his phone torch for light, while Shitty moaned about the prospect of losing his flow for graduation.

“Whose is this?” Holster asked, holding up a pack of protein bars.

“Jack’s, obviously,” Ransom said.

Holster frowned down at them, then up at Jack who stared back.

“Oh!” he said, eventually. “Uh, Bittle do you want to buy my protein bars?”

“Why would I want to do that?” Bitty asked, giving the pack in question a scathing look.

“I’ll buy them back after playoffs?”

Holster let the bars drop on the worktop. “Sure, playoffs, that’s the major holiday next week.”

“Maybe the ‘p’ word should be banned tonight,” Shitty suggested. “Let’s watch  _ Miracle _ .”

* * *

Sunday afternoon saw the team lined up outside the house, as Ransom and Holster explained the rules for the keg hunt. Chris had already forgotten the color-coding of the eggs (was yellow the kosher alcohol or the non-alcoholic drinks? Did it matter to him as long as he didn’t pick up those ones?), but Dex had grabbed onto his and Nursey’s wrists and muttered, ‘we’re doing this as a frog team, right?’ so he hoped he wouldn’t have to remember.

“And finally, of course,” Ransom concluded. “It’s every man for himself. No teams.”

Dex swore.

“Wait, which one is real alcohol?” Chris asked.

Holster frowned at him. “Manischewitz is real alcohol.”

“Anything except yellow, blue, or the ones which have someone’s name written on them, Chowder.” Ransom said. “Any questions? Any allergies or dietary concerns we forgot about?”

“Uh, everyone should try not to drink too much, because we’re in the middle of—”

“Anyone except for Jack?” Holster asked loudly.

When everybody shook their heads, Ransom held his watch up to check the time, and gave them a countdown.

“GO!”

They all sprinted off because it seemed like the right thing to do, but stalled so they could hunt for the eggs. Chris found it fairly easy to spot the eggs. He soon learned that starting fast was a bad idea. He slipped from second place to tenth between the third and sixth eggs and his head span by the time he stood up straight after the fourth shot.

On his way to take an eighth egg to home, Chris almost tripped over Dex, who sat on the grass. He stumbled and steadied himself as the scene in front of him became less blurry. Dex threw back a mini bottle of beer and let the empty bottle fall to the floor. He stared at it, and picked it up again to stand in a line of empty bottles on the ground next to him.

“Bro?” Shitty asked, sitting down next to him.

Dex had a vacant expression on his face. “It's not just the Quarterfinals anymore, Shits. The stakes…”

“Yeah,” agreed Shitty.

“What if I screw up?”

Shitty patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. “Everyone says ah fuck shame about that frog. He'll do better next year.”

Dex groaned.

“What about you?” Chris asked. The ground was hard but slightly damp when he dropped to sit on Dex’s other side.

“Brah, I stopped worrying about my fuck ups years ago.”

“No,” Dex said. “Not what if you fuck up. What about you when we fuck up? You haven't got next year.”

“Why is this a ‘when’ all of a sudden? You're not going to fuck up. I don't think it, Jack doesn’t think it, none of us think it. And whatever happens next week, we're not going to be disappointed in any individual members of this team. You've done good.”

* * *

They went to the Dunkin’ Donuts Center a day early for the final, despite it not being far enough to Providence to make the hotel worth it. The coaches wanted them to have a chance to try the ice out in a full practice beforehand, though. It was surreal skating suicides around the ice, knowing it would be the last time they would do this with Jack as their captain. The stadium wasn’t as nice as Faber, Chris thought, though it was bigger and usually housed an NHL team. Faber was the place he felt at home, with its stunning windows, and the team who had accepted him, no question.

As usual, Chris was the last out of the locker room following practice, but the team were taking their time walking through the stadium, despite the fact that Providence would be there to practice soon.

“Nursey! Dex!” Chris called, when he caught sight of his friends. He broke into a run to try to catch up, overtaking Bitty. “Come on guys,” he shouted to them, without breaking his pace. “It’s bad luck if we run into the other team!”

Dex snorted.

“That’s the goaliest thing he’s ever said,” Nursey commented, glancing over his shoulder at Chris.

“Basically,” Dex agreed. “C, it’s not a wedding.”

“That’s still a tradition, though, isn’t it?” Chris asked, as he fell into step with them. He had definitely heard that before.

“I don’t think many people  _ try  _ to bump into them, but it’s not a superstition I’ve heard of,” Dex said.

“Of course, Poindexter tries to avoid superstitions at all costs,” Nursey said as they joined the juniors. Ransom looked over and frowned at him, but Dex waved the comment away with a roll of the eyes.

“I can still know what the common ones are. I haven’t shaved, have I?”

Nursey hummed. “One more game, then you can.”

“Yeah.”

The words had been said so many times in the past few weeks, but this time it was different. It was no longer playing every game as it came, but absolutely their last game of the year. The last game Jack, Shitty, Hardy, Gozer and Mortzy would play for Samwell. Tomorrow night they would either be shaving their chins as if it were a funeral rite, or drunk in celebration.

* * *

_ One more game. _

The last time Chris would go to breakfast to find Jack eating a PB and J.

The last time they would be subjected to Mortzy’s singing on the way to the stadium.

The last time Shitty would throw a soccer ball at Holster in the locker room, shouting ‘heads up!’ only for it to rebound into somebody’s face.

The last time he would sit through one of Jack’s pre-game speeches.

_ One more game. _

It was hard to push from his head. He knew he was obsessing, and letting the pressure get to him by thinking about the fact that it was the final; that it was Jack’s last chance at the Championships. The problem was he couldn’t switch it off. It rang in his mind the next evening as he watched Jack hit a backhand shot to the goal. It was a practised move which Chris had never seen him miss, but the second it flew away from Jack’s hockey stick, Chris knew something had gone wrong.

Less than a minute later, Providence’s winger shovelled the puck toward Chris; the same move he and Jack had worked on a thousand times. He knew he could save it. The fear of messing up, and the shock over Jack’s miss, made him stutter. The puck found the back of his net.

* * *

Chris dry-retched in the toilets during the intermission.

“Do you want a Xanax?” Nursey asked from the doorway.

When Chris shook his head, Nursey approached cautiously, and sat on the tiled floor next to him.

“Are you sure?”

“I need a clear head.”

“C… It’s not all on you. And there’s still time to pull it back.”

But he couldn’t let in another goal.

They couldn’t finish on failure.

“I can tell Coach Hall to put Vizzy in, if—”

“No.” The worst thing at this point would be to bow out for the last period. He wanted to finish the game.

“Okay,” Nursey said quietly. He tugged on Chris’s wrist, and Chris slumped into his arms, taking comfort from the contact.

“Are you two nearly— Are you okay?”

Chris buried his face in Nursey’s neck, rather than look up at Dex, but he could feel Nursey mouthing something and gesturing. Footsteps moved toward them. Dex’s leg nudged Chris’s and his body was warm at his side.

“You’re playing so well. We’ll bring it back.”

He sounded so sure, and knowing how hard it was for Dex to let himself believe uncertainties brought hope. “Okay.”

“Okay. Coach Murray wanted to talk to us before we go back out.”

* * *

They lost.

Chris fought back tears of disappointment. The last goal he had let in had sealed the deal, and he hated that it was his fault. All the goals he had let him, which added up to the loss of the championship. That goal in the second period which  _ he should have stopped. _ Providence had home advantage and their goalie was Most Outstanding Player of the tournament, so maybe Chris should take comfort in that. They had been the underdogs from the start and up against the best, and they had still been close to taking it into overtime.

Chris wasn’t comforted.

He was the second to leave the ice after the obligatory handshake line, and the first into the locker room, but he didn’t stop to wonder where Jack had gone. He stripped off his kit wishing the heaviness on his heart could be relieved by simply removing his pads.

He sat, waiting for the showers to be free, and trying not to cry. Coach Hall finished his speech about how they had played their best, and retreated to discuss something with Coach Murray and Lardo. Ransom stood up, giving Holster a couple of pats on the back, before he addressed the room as a whole.

“It’s disappointing. Of course it is, but— But we never thought we’d be here in the final in the first place and I just— Fuck, Jack is who knows where, but when he gets back we owe him so much for everything he’s done for the team for the past four years. Three as captain. And to all the other seniors as well. It’s not going to be the same next year without you. But, hey, at least Hardy’s finally graduating. If exams go to plan.” He winked at the fifth-year senior.

“Fuck you, man,” Hardy said, as half-hearted laughs reverberated around the locker room.

When Ransom sat down, the silence of before was gone. A tension had lifted. Nursey caught Chris’s eye from over Dex’s head.

“Next year.”

Chris nodded.

Nursey gave Dex’s back a final rub. “Come on, Dexy. Time to shower.” He stood in front of him, blocking him from the rest of the team so that Chris was the only other person who could see when Dex lifted his head out of his arms. His cheeks were raw and there were still tears in his eyes. When Nursey tugged on the hem of his jersey, he slowly started to undress.

“We've got three more years. And we came second. Out of all of Division One. That's amazing,” Nursey said.

“I thought we had it,” Dex croaked.

“I know.”

“Jack,” Chris whispered, as the door opened and Bitty and Jack slipped in. Chris hadn’t noticed Bitty disappear. He thought of Ransom’s words, and had the urge to clap, to acknowledge Jack as the best captain he could have hoped for, but Bitty pushed Jack towards the showers, and there was a somber expression on both their faces which told him it wasn’t the time.

* * *

Jack was waiting for him when he came out of the shower, pretending to read the sign asking visitors to leave the locker room tidy after use. Everyone else had gone.

“Uh.”

“I won't look,” Jack told him. “Just let me know when you're ready.”

Chris looked down at his undershirt and boxers. “It's okay. I'm decent.” He pulled his pants on while Jack searched for the words to say.

“I wanted to thank you. Everyone played their hearts out today, but you especially.”

Chris didn’t know what to say. He stuttered out a, “Thanks,” then shook his head and tried again. “You're a great captain, Jack, so thank you for that. And— And I'm sorry—”

“Chowder,” Jack said, firmly. “It's not your fault.” He lifted his bag to his shoulder as Chris checked he had everything.

Chris thought of the flubbed backhand shot. “It's not yours, either.”

Jack’s eyes widened, but he smiled. “Thanks, Chowder. You know, I still stand by what I said. You’ll play NHL one day.”

“But I completely fucked up that—”

Jack slapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to have three more years as the starting goalie for a team who are strong enough to make the playoffs consistently. Trust me, you’ll get there. You’re already nearly there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Wait, who are all these extra characters and teammates who are suddenly being introduced? Some of them have been mentioned before but it's hard to keep up with them and why would you introduce new characters in the penultimate chapter?!?!?**  
>  I've had the list since before I started writing. It was maybe a little belated to bring so many properly into the narrative, rather than the odd name drop, but it turned out to be nearly impossible to talk about playoffs and have such a team-focused chapter, whilst still only mentioning the core canon characters we know and love from the comic. [Here's](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qbKgfc0iOa2xo36U4LflnQ4CJnYtRHl_SQnt8Vsdf80/edit?usp=sharing) a handy list of them by year group, which also has the room allocations from the hotel when the frogs roomed together. And for those who prefer tables and want a bit more info about these people, [here's](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yCGsJ-9PMd4jXV42WyOSFmll2hvMge9Vb4gFajSOFp0/edit?usp=sharing) the roster list from playoffs. You'll notice that there's only 20 named players, when it's consistently said throughout this fic that there are 23 members of the team. The 23 comes from my vague memory that that was at one point cited as the number of players on the SMH, although I've recently realized that most NCAA teams would have a few more than that, but I guess the SMH are on the small side. They can only have 18 players + up to 3 goalies on the roster list for any given game, though, and as I've only got 2 named goalies, I only worried about making sure I could create a full roster list of 20 players, including Chris and Vizzy. At least one of those mysterious 3 is a redshirted freshman, who isn't allowed to play until next year, but that's all I can tell you about them, and why they didn't go on all the playoff roadies.
> 
>  **The mug Caitlin got Chris:** I imagine a picture like [this](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e4/90/28/e49028d04c05db1a6004cf1b99590e6a--nassau-bahamas-the-bahamas.jpg) only maybe a bit pinker, but honestly google Nassau beach sunset, loads of them are that mix of light pink and blue.
> 
> Eek, just one chapter left! First year is almost at an end.


	18. Finals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frosh year comes to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Christopher Franklin Chow <3

Though the season was now over, the team didn’t stop spending time together. It was disappointing to see everyone clean-shaven again, and Shitty had cut his flow off in an act horribly reminiscent of turning his back on hockey altogether, even though logically Chris knew it was just because of his grandparents going to graduation. Conversation felt awkward for a few days, with them falling back onto talk about finals, but they couldn't avoid all talk about hockey for too long. Chris arrived to a spontaneous team breakfast on the morning of April 15th to find his teammates buzzing about NHL playoffs.

“It's got to be Sens vs Habs. What investment do any of us have in the Flames or the Canucks? Besides. Timezones.”

“They're at different times. Why don't we watch both?”

“Jack. _Brah,”_ Shitty said. “I love you and your dedication to revolving your life around this sport, but not all of us are hockey robot enough to watch every game. We have finals to study for and need to sleep some time.”

“So it's definitely the Sens game,” Chris joined in. “So we can sleep. How did this even become a debate?”

“But the Caps,” Ollie said.

“Ollie, bro, I love you, but you already said you and Wicky are watching that in your own dorm, so you don’t get a say.” Holster banged his spoon on the table to emphasize his point.

“That doesn’t mean you can pretend that game isn’t even happening! Why’s your choice between all the Canadian teams when the Caps are playing?”

“Because our captain is Canadian and so is our future captain.”

“I’m not going to be—” Ransom started, but Bitty interrupted, clapping his hands together. “Okay! Haus NHL viewing tonight at seven. Frogs, if you're coming, be there a little early for pie. Optional late night game for those who pick hockey over sleep.”

“Of course, Bittle’s never picked baking over sleep,” Jack said.

“That was one time!” All Jack had to do was raise an eyebrow and Bitty squirmed. “Alright, maybe twice.”

From there grew a routine. Every night there was a playoff game, they would go to the Haus, eat pie, pretend to study and pick a team to loudly cheer on. Their focus ended up being on the Eastern Conference, both by virtue of the timezone and because of the teams which different members of the team supported. It was strange for Chris, who had always been more invested in the Western Conference, but with both the Sharks and the Aces out of the running, he had to admit that he didn’t have enough interest in the Western teams to warrant staying up late with exams around the corner. It was fun watching Nursey egg on the Rangers as if they might hear him through the television screen. Nothing would make Chris choose the Ducks over that, even as the number of arguments between Nursey and Jack increased.

“I don’t even know why you’re supporting the Pens,” Nursey said, during the first game between the Rangers and the Penguins. “It’s not like your dad plays any more.”

Jack scowled and made a point to straighten out his Penguins’ Zimmermann number 11 jersey, so that the ‘C’ and the Stanley Cup patches were obvious.

* * *

Though the season was over, there were still a few things they had to do before the summer, mostly in preparation for the next year. The intense sorting of their locker room and kit closet was organised under Lardo’s firm direction, and they had good fun doing it, laughing and chirping and occasionally throwing jockstraps at each other, until Wicky asked if they were going to take the seniors’ names off their cubbies.

“What, no, they're staying forever,” Lardo said.

“Yeah, sounds good. Jack can be captain another year. Screw the Schooners or the Falcs or whoever you're signing with,” Holster said. He and Ransom shared a sideways glance at each other. The whole team were on edge to see which of the two of them would be captain. As far as Chris knew nobody had voted for anybody else, but it was hard to see a clear winner between Ransom and Holster. He had voted for Ransom, after much humming and harring and a flip of a coin, and so had Dex, but he knew Nursey and Lardo had both voted for Holster. Even though whichever didn’t get the title would end up filling the role of Alternate, officially or not, they were all interested to see who would get the title.

It was only a few hours before they found out. They had dressed up smartly and so many ties had been passed around that Chris had lost track of whose he was borrowing within minutes. They sat through a sit down meal at the Samwell University Golf Course Clubhouse, and listened to Coach Hall’s end of year speech.

“Now, I know you’re all anxiously waiting to find out who will captain you now that Jack is leaving, along with our other seniors, but before I invite Jack up to give the senior rep speech, I’d like to award the John Carlisle award, for that player whose enthusiasm and devotion best exemplifies the team’s spirit. Coach Murray and I had very little trouble deciding who it should go to this year. The Carlisle award is presented to Christopher F. Chow.”

Chris wasn’t sure why everybody was looking at him. He sat waiting for someone to go and get the plaque or for Coach Hall to cough and say a mistake had been made or that it was a prank of sorts. Instead he had Shitty frowning at him in concern and Ransom and Holster looking at him expectantly and Nursey nudging him and muttering, “C, bro, it's you. Go on.”

“I… really?” he asked. The room rumbled with laughter.

“Really,” Coach Murray told him. Chris let Nursey and Lardo push him up to the front of the room.

Coach Hall patted him on the shoulder as Chris returned to his seat with the plaque. “And now I invite Jack Zimmermann as your captain for the past three seasons, to give the senior rep speech.”

Nursey nudged Chris and the two of them spent Jack’s introduction leaning over the plaque, reading the words printed on it over and over again. Chris traced over the last six letters of _Christopher_ , marvelling that they had done that for him. A foot collided with Chris’s thigh, and he looked up expecting Dex to tell them to pay attention, but instead was met with an excited grin and he passed it across the table so that Dex could have a look, too.

“And now I’m glad to announce the captaincy for the next school year,” Jack said, causing Chris’s head to snap towards him. There was a splatter of applause before Jack said, “Adam Birkholtz… and Justin Oluransi. By a split vote. Congratulations.”

* * *

The next day they were greeted with the news that Jack had signed with the Providence Falconers, and Chris was glad that Ransom and Holster were already officially in place to replace him as SMH captains as it was the first time Jack leaving felt real.

“Wow, so you’re really going to play NHL!”

Jack chuckled. “Haha, I guess. Do you want to practise with me tomorrow?”

Chris turned to look over his shoulder, to check Jack wasn’t talking to someone else. “Me?”

“I need someone who can actually defend a goal.”

“Hey!” Holster objected, but Jack didn’t tear his eyes away from Chris.

“And I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Chris balked at the words, but forced a smile onto his face, even as his brain started listing all the reasons he might be in trouble. Jack surely wanted to tell him that he had thought it over now that the season was over and he had to retract his previous statement that Chris could ever play in the NHL, because the NHL would never accept a trans player, especially one who had made such stupid mistakes during the Frozen Four, and maybe— a foot colliding with his thigh broke Chris out of his thoughts. Jack was still staring at him expectantly. “Oh, uh, okay! Tomorrow morning?”

Nursey squeezed his elbow and shot him a concerned look, but Chris ignored him and helped himself to another slice of pie as Jack sent off an email to see if they could book some ice time.

* * *

They met on the ice at Faber the next day and skated a few laps to warm up before Jack scattered quarter of a box of pucks around the ice and Chris retreated to his crease. Chris had to anticipate which puck Jack might hit next and where he would need to be to block it, whilst Jack had to try to deliver his shots in an unexpected way, fast enough that there wouldn't be time to react.

It only took a few shots for Jack to revert to captain-mode, offering up comments about the weaknesses of which he was taking advantage in Chris’s defense, and Chris returned the favor by letting Jack know about the tells which betrayed where he planned to aim his shots.

“Do you want to stop?” Chris asked when they had finished the next set of pucks. “Or should we go through one more bucket?”

“Nah, let’s clean up. Nice work.”

They skated around, collecting up the pucks without talking, until Chris couldn’t contain his worry any longer. Jack had wanted to talk to him, hadn’t he? So why wasn’t he talking? Chris wanted this conversation over with quickly, and putting it off while they distracted themselves with hockey had been torture.

“Uh, Jack? I know you said you wanted to talk to me, and I know why. I’ve been meaning to bring it up since the Championship. I’m sorry about our last game. _Your_ last game. I know you told me it wasn’t my fault, but— Maybe—” He swallowed furiously against the lump in his throat. “One of those goals was me not bringing my A-game, and you of all people shouldn’t leave Samwell thinking it was your fault—”

“Chowder,” Jack interrupted, a firmness in his voice which made Chris clamp his teeth together. Right. Jack was the one who should be talking. He stared down at the lines marking the ice, “I was going to tell you once we got to the locker room, but... I want you to have my dibs.”

Chris frowned. The words he was hearing weren’t the ones he had been expecting. He looked up, eyes wide, wondering if this was a strange dream or a cruel joke.

“Chowder,” Jack said again, and the smile on his face was more genuine and natural than Chris had ever seen. Chris’s eyes welled up in a rush of emotions as he realized that this was really happening. “You did a great job as our goalie this season as a _freshman._ You’re a team player, you’re hard working and you bring a good spirit to the team.”

When he felt a tear trickle down his cheek, Chris buried his face in his arm.

“And I hope you bring that to the Haus,” Jack finished, nudging Chris until he lifted his head and clasped Jack’s outstretched hand.

“Th-thank you,” Chris tried to say, but the words caught in his throat. “I mean, thank-you!” He turned away under the pretence of picking up the last of the pucks, and wiped his cheeks.

“Yeah. Anyway, I should take these back.” Jack lifted the bucket of pucks as Chris threw the last ones on top. “You can have the showers first and then we can walk over to the Beach together? Haus study sesh.”

“Wow. I still can’t believe it! Jack, I don’t know what to say.” Being invited to join the rest of the Haus in their study session made it real, even if it was rare for such things to be exclusive. He doubted they would be there for a full half hour before Bitty invited Dex and Nursey. “Oh man!” he realized, his thoughts returning to Jack’s room. “That’s right across the hall from Bitty!”

* * *

Ransom and Holster had set up camp at the Beach, complete with a picnic blanket and fold-out chairs. Shitty was lying on the grass, in a spot of sun a few feet away, using Lardo’s bag as a pillow. Lardo was playing Candy Crush on her phone instead of studying. When Jack and Chris reached them, Ransom and Holster cheered.

“It had to be Chowder. Fuck yeah,” Holster said with a grin. “Come on, Ransy, let's see who won.”

“Won?” repeated Chris.

Ransom and Holster dug in their pockets, bringing out fists clasped around something too small to see.

“Last year Johnson threw us for a loop,” Ransom explained. “We never expected Bitty to get unsolicited dibs when people like Jell-O and Wags had done so much for Johnson in a direct bid for dibs. Obviously a Hausmate can give his dibs to whomever he chooses and Johnson said it was convenient or whatever he said and whatever it means, but we decided this year we'd have a little competition between us to guess who would get Jack and Shitty’s dibs. And I obviously won because I got both right.” He opened up his hand to reveal two keychains: one with a duck on and the other with a shark.

“Fuck.” Holster said. He threw two frog keychains onto the blanket and sat back to stare at Ransom. “How the fuck did you guess he'd give Lardo dibs? It's always been players before.”

Ransom smirked. When his eyes flickered down to Holster’s keychains, he laughed. “Bro, what is this? They're just frogs.”

“Yeah at least we drew on guessing Chowder.”

“This isn't a draw. How do I know you didn't think it would be Dex and Nursey?”

“Uh, bro, that is Chowder and that is Nursey. Dex would obviously be a wrench.”

“Brahs,” Shitty interrupted. “Didn’t you say if you both guessed right, the winner would be the one whose keychain the dibsee wanted?”

Ransom and Holster snapped their heads up to look at Chris, who started. “Oh, uh, can I have both?”

“What? Chowder, no,” Holster whined.

“This is so unfair. Holtzy blatantly copped out by buying the frogs and I've clearly won.”

“I say he can have both,” Lardo chipped in. “And I want my frog keychain too. You'll get me a fish next time, right? I want a whole pond.” Lardo scooped the keychains up and dropped the shark and one of the frogs in Chris’s lap. “There. Now all we need is our Haus keys to put them on.”

“So,” Chris said. “We’re going to be neighbors.”

Lardo grinned back at him. “Fuck yeah. Bathroom buddies.”

“And we won’t have to cross campus just to get Bitty’s pie!”

Lardo held her hand up for a fist bump as Jack asked, “Where _is_ Bittle?”

“He was going to bake some cookies to bring,” Holster explained.

“If the oven will let him,” Ransom added without looking up from his laptop.

Jack turned back to the pond, and lifted his camera to take a photo. Chris curiously watched the way that Jack lowered his camera, chewed on his lips as if he was considering saying something, then brought it back up to his eyes. “I was thinking,” he said, turning back to them. “Since Bittle’s oven is broken. We should get him a new one. You know, get everyone to pitch in?”

The rest of them looked around at each other. The Haus needed a new oven, whether they called it Bitty’s or not, but getting everyone to chip in for it as a present for Bitty sounded like a good way to do it.

“His birthday’s coming up,” Holster said, and that was all they needed to hear for it to develop into a plan.

* * *

Chris met Caitlin at the dining hall that evening and pulled her far away from the groups of fellow hockey players so that he could catch her up on everything that had happened that day.

“We’ll be so much closer next year!” She said, when he told her about Jack’s dibs. “Only a few houses down. That’s close enough I can come round in my slippers.”

Chris nodded as he looked around the room, his eyes falling on where Dex, Nursey, Ransom and Holster were eating. Dex looked comfortable and relaxed as he laughed at Holster trying to see how many tomatoes he could fit in his mouth without them bursting. Chris wished he didn’t have to be the one to end the good mood.

“Have you told them yet?” Caitlin asked. Chris blinked at her and she nodded towards his friends. “Will and Nursey?”

Chris shook his head. “I don’t— Nursey will be really happy for me, but I think Dex was hoping he might get dibs, and… I don’t know if that necessarily means he’ll be upset _I_ got them instead, but, uh, you know—”

“Lardo isn’t on the team.”

“Yeah. It’s a bit not fitting in with the rules we were told apply to dibs. And that’s not saying I think he’ll be upset with Lardo, either! Or even Shitty, because I know he respects Shitty and everything, but I don’t know how he’ll react to it.”

“You have to tell him, Chris. He’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Caitlin sighed. “It’s a shame the Haus isn’t a bit bigger. The Dig’s big enough that the whole volleyball team live there except for frosh.”

“There’s less of you. And more people share rooms. But yeah, it would be nice to have everyone there. I feel sorry for everyone who never gets to their whole time at Samwell, you know?”

“I know, but it's how things go sometimes. I don't think it would ruin their whole Samwell experience.”

Chris chewed on his lips and nodded.

“What was the other thing you wanted to tell me?” Caitlin nudged.

“Oh! Uh, we came up with this idea to get the Haus a new oven for Bitty’s birthday.”

“An oven? Wow. Big gift. When's his birthday?”

“Tuesday of finals week. It'll probably be our last party before I go home, too. Or Friday will be, but Friday's looking a bit weird so far.”

“After all those exams we might just want to sleep.”

Chris laughed. “Yeah. Hey, when have you booked your flight for?”

Caitlin went still, her fork halfway to her mouth, and stared at her plate wide-eyed.

“Cait?” Chris pressed, curious about her reaction.

“I, uh, I still haven't booked it. I guess I've been putting it off.”

He waited for her to elaborate and when she didn’t, he reached over to cover her hand with his, running his thumb in comforting circles over her wrist. “What were you planning on doing over the summer?”

She pulled her hand away. “I don't know! I probably should just go to my dad's and stop being a baby about it. I was fine there for seven years and all through last summer and I mean, fuck, you know? He's my dad, he's always provided for me and he took me in after my Mama died and he's never—”

 _“Cait.”_ Chris didn’t think he could stand to hear Caitlin say that she should be grateful that her father hadn’t treated her worse.

“Samwell changed me,” she said, her voice cracking. “Going to SDC, hanging out with Makena and Donna and everyone, seeing you coming out and deciding to change your name— It made me properly come to terms with it’s okay to be proud of who I am. Dad always just tried to fix me, but that’s not— _Fuck._ And then at Christmas when Ally asked me to stay at UCLA with her it was so _easy._ So good. I don’t want to go back to feeling trapped.”

“Okay. So don’t go back there. What’s Ally doing?”

“They close the house over the summer. She’s going home to be with her mom.”

Chris chewed on his lips as he thought the situation over. “You’re an adult now. You don’t have to go home.”

“I know, but,” Caitlin sighed, “I’m just not sure if I want to be staying at Samwell on my own all summer. It won’t feel like a summer, and I’ll just get bored and lonely.”

“So stay with other people. I bet March would be happy for you to stay with her for a bit. You can— You can always come up to mine, too. And you could sort out some trips to places so that you’re too busy to be thinking about going to your dad’s. Maybe one with Ally? Or me, again, I can— I mean. I want to help.”

“Your parents—”

“They’d be fine with it. I’ll call them in a bit and check, but if you haven’t booked your flights yet, why don’t you see if you can get on mine to San Francisco. You can stay all summer if you want, I just figured you might want to see other people a bit.”

“I— Yeah. Ally was talking about wanting to road trip up to Vancouver. Maybe she could pick me up from yours.”

“Yeah! And then if you wanted to go and see March—”

“Ally could take me to hers after Vancouver.”

Chris nodded encouragingly.

“And then maybe I could come back here a little bit early, and stay with April for a bit before we move back into the Dig.”

“That sounds like you have a plan.”

Caitlin’s cheeks colored and she dipped her head. “Thanks, Chris. I— It means a lot to me, you letting me stay.”

Chris didn’t know what to say. Obviously his doors were open to Caitlin. “I love you,” he told her. “I know we’ve not been together that long, like probably not long enough to be living together over the summer, but I want you to be happy, and I’d really like for you to stay with me.”

Caitlin’s eyes remained fixed on the table, but there was a coy smile on her face and she reached out for his hand. “You know, suddenly I’m wishing summer would come round faster.”

Chris’s fingers closed around hers. “Only a few weeks to go. Last week of classes tomorrow.”

* * *

That final week went quickly, too. It was strange to think that almost nine months had passed, but frosh year was rapidly coming to an end, and Chris had barely processed his last class on Friday finishing before they were getting ready for the Spring Concert. They had team breakfast at the Haus, complete with mimosas then the day was lost to drinking and dancing.

After that came a week of supposed studying which turned into watching more of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Frogs cheered the Caps through their win against the Islanders (only Dex had been supporting the Islanders, and given how quickly his allegiance switched when the game had been decided, Chris suspected that he had only done it to annoy Nursey), and they created a drinking game for Tampa and Detroit’s seventh game. Nursey and Dex took Detroit’s side and Chris and Caitlin were supporting the Bolts, and every time their team conceded a point they drank. They also had to drink for every penalty against their team, for every fight which broke out, and every time their goalie leaves his crease. When the Red Wings pulled their goalie in the third, Dex swore.

“Can I just down the rest of this and call it a day?” he asked, holding up his beer.

“We should do this for all the games from now on,” Chris said. “And next year, we can start it at the beginning instead of when it’s almost round two!”

“You’re only saying that because you’ve managed to pick all the right teams to back,” Nursey said. “Next year we’ll end up watching more of them at the Haus, probably.”

“So it’ll be more fun to be drinking!”

“We’ll probably get in fights. Talking of, I don’t want to watch the Rangers’ Round two games with Ollie.”

“It’s way more interesting if not everyone’s supporting the same team,” Caitlin argued, taking a sip of her drink.

“We could still watch in one of our dorms,” Dex said.

Chris raised an eyebrow. Dex hadn’t reacted badly to the news that Chris and Lardo had been given dibs. In fact, he had barely reacted at all, but he had gone quiet, and they hadn’t talked about it since. Chris had felt too awkward to bring it up. “One of?” he asked now.

“Uh, yeah.” Dex exchanged a look with Nursey. “We booked our dorms for next year. We’ve gone for singles.”

“Oh. Uh. Is everything— I mean— Are you two—”

“Chill, C. We’re good.” Nursey wrapped his arm around Dex’s waist to emphasize his point.

“Singles in the same block. Hopefully next to each other. Just, we thought it might be good to have a bit of space? And the budget works out as long as I'm in the Haus for the year after and nothing disastrous happens.”

* * *

With arrangements for sophomore year firmly in place, the Frogs were ready to stop being Frogs. Only their finals stood in the way, despite insistence from the older members of the teams that they would always be Frogs. Studying, however, was still taking a back seat compared to NHL and arranging Bitty’s birthday. Jack had found the oven, and Dex had confirmed he would be able to fit it, but there always seemed to be more to plan: who would pick it up; how they were going to keep Bitty distracted; who would be invited to the inevitable kegster. On more than one occasion, Chris was sure that Bitty’s suspicions had been raised, but his teammates proved to be terrifyingly good at lying to cover their tracks. By the weekend, Bitty believed in some of the strangest combinations of people being in study groups together, thanks to who he had been around when group texts had come through.

The big day finally rolled around, and their secret group chat was going off incessantly with updates. Ransom had compiled a Google Sheet to make sure that Bitty was never left alone at a time when he could decide to wander back to the Haus, and Chris was woken up an hour earlier than he needed to be up for his exam when Ollie texted to confirm he and Wicky had the keys to Holster’s jeep and were just setting off to pick up the new oven. They needed to get it back to the Haus after Lardo had taken Bitty out for breakfast, but early enough that Dex could start fitting it the moment he got back from handing in a paper.

After his Chinese oral exam, Chris went to Kotter where he looked over his Politics paper whilst waiting for Nursey and Bitty to join him. His phone beeped with the notification that Caitlin’s exam had finished, and he was telling her to meet them in South Quad when Nursey sidled up to him.

“Yo.”

“Hi! Did you finish your paper okay?”

“Just handed it in after lunch.”

“And how’s Dex doing? Did you go to the Haus for lunch?”

Nursey nodded. “He’s got it fitted. He’s just tidying up and stuff, but we’re good to head straight to the Haus, soon as Bitty’s here, other than giving Ransom and Holster the time to get back.”

“Sw’awesome! I told Cait we’d meet her at South Quad, so going over there will give them a bit of time to run ahead of us, and then we can walk slowly.”

“Are you kidding me?”

They both turned to see Bitty staring at them, flanked by Ransom and Holster.

“I don’t need babysitters! Why are y’all passing me off to one another like I can’t be left alone?”

“Hi Bitty! How was your final?” Chris asked. Bitty narrowed his eyes at him.

“Chowder. Sweet Chowder. My favorite frog. What’s going on?”

Chris looked around. “Uh, well I just finished my Chinese oral? It was okay, but there were some questions I didn’t really understand so I just chatted about my hobbies for a bit and hopefully it was right?”

“Nursey?” Bitty asked.

“What do you mean C’s your favorite?” Nursey asked.

Bitty huffed.

“Right, well see you later!” Holster called, already halfway out the building.

Chris’s phone beeped. “Ooh! That’ll be Caitlin. We should go.”

“Go where?” Bitty asked. “Are we going to the Haus?”

“The Haus?” Chris looked at Nursey, and pulled his face into a neutral mask. “But Caitlin’s at South Quad.”

“Can we… go to South Quad and then the Haus?”

“If you really want to, Bitty. It is your birthday, after all. Oh! I didn't even say it! Happy birthday!”

“Really?” Bitty looked so shocked to be allowed back at the Haus that Chris nearly lost his composure, but thankfully Nursey was quick to respond.

“Wait. It's not your birthday?”

“Yes, Nursey, it's my birthday!”

“Oh, but I thought you just said… Really what?”

“Really, you'll let me go to the Haus!?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Because something’s going on!”

They had reached Caitlin by now, who grinned at them. “Hi Bitty! Happy birthday!”

“Thanks Farmer. Do you know what's—”

“I can't tell you anything.”

Bitty typed furiously on his phone. Chris led the way back to the Pond to take the scenic route to the Haus, under the pretence of wanting to see the ducklings.

“Yo, Bitty, no more tweeting,” Nursey said.

“What?”

“Look, you know we've got something planned for your birthday. You shouldn’t be tweeting when it happens because you'll miss the full impact. One last tweet then gimme your phone.”

“But—”

“I'll live tweet it for you!”

Bitty looked apprehensive, but he wrote a final tweet and handed his phone over. The rest of the walk back was filled with Nursey passing on messages from Bitty’s followers and Bitty warning Nursey against ruining his reputation. In the Haus yard, Nursey called for a ‘before picture’, and then Caitlin gave Bitty a nudge to go in.

The rest of the team were stood in the kitchen, as planned, around the new oven. Chris peered past Bitty to get a look at it. It had a sleeker, more modern finish than the old one. Bitty, however, didn’t see the oven. Instead, he looked around at the team, and chuckled. “Okay, y’all. The whole team’s here and I haven’t baked anything. It’s a surprise party. I get it.”

Everyone else grinned back at him, and a few people said, “Happy birthday.”

Chris couldn’t see Bitty’s expression, but he felt the confusion in his hesitation. “Aren’t you gonna yell surprise?”

It was the smile on Dex’s face which told Chris that Bitty had seen it — that, and Jack snapping a photo of him. Bitty’s hand flew up to his mouth.

“Happy birthday, Bittle,” Jack said.

“You— But you forgot it was my birthday!”

Jack chuckled and shrugged.

“This was _all_ Jack,” Shitty told him.

“Everyone chipped in,” corrected Jack.

Tears streamed down Bitty’s face, and Ransom and Holster gave him some relief from everyone else’s attention by passing around the beers. He was still stammering in shock over the oven, and demanding that they let him bake something in it straight away, which nobody was going to deny him.

* * *

Chris’s final exam was Friday morning, and it was the Ethics one he had with Nursey, so as soon as they had finished, they walked together back to the parking lot Nursey kept his car in, and drove back to Chris’s dorm to pack away his life.

Chris had already split his room into ‘going back to California’ and ‘staying at the Haus’, so it wasn’t too difficult for them to box it all up, and pile it into Nursey’s car. Chris made sure that the forms Lardo and Dex had gathered for him so that he could change his name were secure in a folder which would stop them from getting screwed up, and placed carefully in his ‘going back to California’ case. They were already half filled in, but needed finishing off when he got back to his parents’ house and had access to some paperwork he hadn’t brought to Samwell before he could post them to the relevant places. He had already made sure that his mom had some stamps ready and waiting.

They stopped at the accommodation center to hand back Chris’s keys, then carried onto the Haus, where Bitty had a trayful of _‘Congratulations!’_ cupcakes waiting in celebration of the end of the year. A couple of graduation robes were hanging on the door frame and Chris marvelled at them.

“Wow. It's really— They're really— This is it.”

“Yeah,” Nursey breathed.

“Frogs are here!” Holster’s voice bellowed through the Haus.

Jack appeared in the living room doorway. “Oh. Chowder. Hello. We're going to put your boxes in the hall between mine and Bitty’s rooms. Where is everything?”

It didn’t take long for them to move everything in between them, so after not too long they were collapsed on the couch listening to Ransom and Holster’s debate about going to Myrtle Beach. Dex joined them for dinner, and the rest of the team showed up for dessert.

“We’re going to kiss the ice before the game,” Mortzy announced.

“What? No, we have to do that the last night before graduation!” Shitty said, flinging some cream at Lardo in his agitation.

“Yeah, but, Gozer and I won’t be here. You can still kiss the ice then if you want. I’m going home tomorrow. It’s my niece’s bat mitzvah, and it’s not like it’s far for me to just come back on the day for graduation.”

Shitty narrowed his eyes at Gozer, who shrugged. “I’m not walking.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“What the fuck.”

“I’ll have to work out when I’m going to do it,” Hardy mused.

Shitty threw his spoon into his bowl. “You’re going to do it on the last night before graduation with me and Jack, like tradition says.”

“Nah, Johnson sent me an email a bit ago saying I had to do it on my own. I think it’s some sort of tradition about only kissing the ice with people you also started Samwell with, or… To be honest, he wasn’t very clear about it, but he was adamant that I do it by myself.”

“Johnson’s so weird,” Shitty grumbled, but he didn’t complain again as Mortzy and Gozer got up to go to Faber, and asked if anyone else was joining them.

* * *

When they got back to Nursey and Dex’s suite after the Capitals had lost in overtime to the Rangers, Nursey pulled the mattresses off both their beds, and pushed them together in the middle of the floor for the three of them to share.

“You’re going to fall through the middle,” Dex told him.

“It’ll be great,” Nursey said, as if Dex hadn’t spoken. “We can have a frog pile and stay up late cuddling and talking.”

“You’re going to wake up, on the floor, in between the two mattresses, and C and I won’t have any sympathy for you, because we could have just let him have my bed and you and I share yours and everyone would be comfortable.”

“So great,” Nursey said, tapping Dex on the chest. “Okay so we're not going to need our spare sheets until after summer, so we might as well use them to make a blanket fort. C, get that chair and my pillows. Dex, where's that red blanket gone?”

They pulled all the sheets, blankets, pillows and cushions they could find into a fort and settled inside with Netflix playing The Princess and the Frog in the background as they chattered about nothing. When the film ended, they took the laptop out of the fort and pulled the covers around themselves. Nursey insisted on spooning Chris while Dex spooned him.

“Why didn't we do this more? This is fucking great. I love you two.”

“We can do it more next year,” Chris promised.

“Good. Because this sort of thing like really helps me and I don't want to miss out on cuddles next year if I’m in a single.”

“I’ll still cuddle you,” Dex said.

“Yeah, but, you know, if you’re coming over just for that or I’m going to yours just for that it’ll be like— I mean, I’ll feel like— I might want— It’s just different.”

“It doesn’t have to be, but okay. We have to get up in five hours, you know.”

Chris smiled into his cushion. “Sorry, Dex. I get all the Nursey cuddles.”

“You’re a great cuddler, Chow,” Nursey told him.

“For fuck’s sake, you two, go to sleep,” Dex said, but Chris could hear the smile in his voice.

* * *

Chris was jerked awake by the shrill tone of the alarm. He wiped his eyes as Dex scrambled to turn the alarm off. They definitely hadn’t slept for long enough. Nursey was groaning next to him, the noise muffled but Chris was too tired to look.

Until he heard Dex snort.

Nursey was face down between the mattresses which must have slid apart during the night. One of his arms was bent awkwardly under his chest and the other stretched out onto Dex’s spot. Dex perched on the mattress, tracing patterns on the back of his hand, grinning like a cat with a giant bowl of cream.

“Morning, beautiful, time to wake up.”

“I hate you,” Nursey mumbled.

“This is completely your fault. I did warn you.”

With great effort, Nursey pulled himself up to sit back on his knees, and pouted. There were stripes on his face where the pattern of the carpet had indented his skin. Nursey scowled when both Chris and Dex collapsed into laughter.

“You're horrible.”

“I _warned you,”_ Dex said, “and you can't tell me this isn't a little funny.” He ran a finger down Nursey’s nose, and kissed his forehead.

“You're the worst boyfriend. You should have rescued me.”

Surprise fluttered across Dex’s face and his smile settled into softness.

“From the big scary hole between the mattresses?” Chris asked.

“Exactly!” Nursey pushed himself to his feet and stretched to crack his back. He frowned at Dex, who was staring at his knees with a soppy smile on his face. “What's with you?”

Dex cleared his throat. “Oh, uh, nothing.”

“William.”

“You've just never called me your boyfriend before.”

Nursey’s eyes widened, as if he had been caught out. “Uh, oh, well, uh, that's what we are, no?”

“It was always up to you how we labelled it.”

Chris watched as Nursey dropped his eyes to the floor, a hint of red coloring his cheeks. They hadn't been labelling it at all the last Chris knew, and given Nursey’s struggle with labels, which they had talked about all those months ago, it was obvious why.

“Yeah, well,” Nursey said. “I love you, so…”

“I know you do,” Dex said, getting up so that he could pull Nursey into a hug. “Not that I can believe you just said that for the first time in front of Chowder.”

Chris laughed, and Nursey glanced at him over Dex’s shoulder.

“Well, why not?” he asked. “I love Chowder, too. In a different way, sure, but…”

Chris’s cheeks heated up and he let out a squeak. Dex twisted his head to look at him.

“Hmm, I know what you mean. I love him, too.”

“He's pretty great, isn't he?”

They were both staring at Chris, even as they continued their praises of him as if he wasn’t there, but Chris knew that by now his face was a horrible shade of red, so he buried it in his hands. “Guys,” he whined.

“I don't think he loves us back,” Dex said.

“No,” Chris started to object, but Nursey spoke over him.

“Maybe if we love him harder.”

“No, I do love you!”

When he looked up at them, they grinned at him. “So fucking prove it and get in this hug,” Nursey said.

“You're my best friends,” Chris said, to emphasize his point as he wrapped his arms around their waists. “I'm going to miss you so much.”

“Summer’s gonna be so long,” Dex sighed.

“I'm going to come and visit both of you,” Nursey promised.

Chris perked up at the thought of showing Nursey around his home town. “Ooh! You should! We'll get tea!”

“All my life I've wanted to go to San Francisco to be able to have tea.”

“I know you have Boba Guys in New York, Nursey, but you still don’t even call it by it’s real _name,_ so you’ve got to have it in San Francisco. It’s much better. And Dex can come too! And Caitlin’s staying.”

“Bubble tea is bubble tea, I really don’t think the city—” Nursey cut himself off when Dex pulled away from them.

“I really can't, C. I'm sorry. I'm going to be working every day and I can't really take it off. In fact, it's probably not worth you coming to visit me, either.”

“It'll be worth it to see you, whether you're working ten hour days or not,” Nursey argued.

“But Brian and Joan are funny about guests and there's no hotels nearby and then they'll ask questions about why you're visiting me and we won't be able to _do_ anything and you'll be bored and—”

As Dex talked, Nursey placed his hands either side of his face, and repeated the word “Okay,” until Dex stopped to listen. “Okay, baby, breathe, it's okay. I won't. I won't get bored and I'll airbnb it or something if you change your mind, but it’s okay if it'll be too much stress for you. I won't come. And… you're totally invited to Manhattan, any time you want, but I understand if you can't do that either.”

“I can't. I'm sorry.”

“Not even for my cousin's wedding?”

“Why would I come to your cousin's wedding?”

Nursey caught Chris’s eye and gave a huff which was too exasperated to be genuine. “I don't know, Poindexter. Arm candy?”

“It's like, a family thing, though.”

“Well, yeah.”

Dex frowned down at the floor, and Nursey raised his eyebrows at Chris, silently pleading for help.

“You know, I told Bitty this way back at the beginning of the year and I think it’s only grown since. You’re my family as much as my actual family are. The team. We’re a family, okay?”

When Dex bit down on his bottom lip, Chris could see the tears in his eyes, but before he could say anything else he was pulled into another bone-crushing hold. One of his arms got caught awkwardly over Nursey’s shoulder, but Dex’s grip on his waist was too tight to pull away so Chris succumbed to the hug.

“Uh, so I will miss you both, but we really need to go.”

Dex jerked his head up and grabbed his from his desk to check the time. “Yeah. You need to pack, Nursey. Fuck.”

Nursey looked around the room. “I'll come back here after I've dropped you two off.”

“You're not allowed to double cross us and stay any more nights,” Chris told him.

“Now there's an idea.”

* * *

After a rush to pull the last of Dex’s things together, a queue for the shower and an intense cleaning session directed by Dex, they swung by Frat Row to drop Dex’s bed linen at the Haus and pick Caitlin up from the volleyball house.

“It looks busy here,” Nursey commented when they had finally settled into seats, Caitlin’s case perched between her and Chris in the back.

“It’s a bigger house than yours. Everyone except for the frosh live there so all five of us were moving our things in with dorms closing today.”

“Chowder, can you move that way at bit,” Dex said, waving his hand back and forth as he tried to get a look out the back to make sure he wasn't about to run someone over mid-maneuver.

* * *

They went to the Amtrak station first this time, because it was still a while before the flight to San Francisco. Dex pulled into a parking spot and cut the engine, but rather than getting out of the car, he stared at the wall of the parking garage, absently wiping around the steering wheel with a kleenex from his pocket.

“I know you don't want to give me my car back, but this is ridiculous,” Nursey said after Dex had dropped his eyes to the control panel and started cleaning in earnest.

Dex jumped.

“William.”

“Yeah,” Dex said, and finally undid his seatbelt and opened the door. The rest of them followed him out of the car, and Nursey lifted his bags out of the trunk for him. “I… I guess I’ll see you in August. That’s such a fucking long time away.”

“We’ll be here,” Chris said.

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll see you. I…” Dex frowned down at his rucksack.

“Come here, you,” Caitlin said, holding out an arm. They took their turns exchanging hugs and promises to Skype _all the time,_ but Dex still didn’t seem sure what to do when Nursey finally let him go. He lifted his bags onto his back, and stared at them uncertainly.

“You’re going to miss your train,” Nursey reminded him, softly.

“Right. I... I’ll call you. See you in August.” He was halfway across the garage when he turned and added, “Have a good summer!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's it! All finished!!  
> It's been one hell of a ride, and many thanks to everyone who has stuck it out with me from the beginning, to everyone who has commented or given kudos or recced Fresh to a friend. You're all great!
> 
> My next project to focus on is [Stanley's Solution](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11538117), a NurseyDex AU of which I posted the first chapter back in NurseyDex week. That will just be a short-ish fic, probably, and then I'll get to work on my second long fic in this Frogs series, which will be Dex's POV, and called _Tainted_.


End file.
